June 3
DLC Offers Programs to Expand Charging Infrastructure
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Duquesne Light Company (DLC), based in Pittsburgh, has developed a series of new programs to help local organizations install EV charging infrastructure. The initiatives will expand the number of public, workplace, multi-family and fleet charging stations in Allegheny and Beaver counties in Pennsylvania. There are three new programs, including the Community Charging Program, which helps expand the availability of EV charging at public, workplace and multi-family properties.
ComEd is partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory’s Center for Climate Resilience and Decision Science and the EPRI’s Climate READi initiative, a recently announced, three-year global program on climate change resilience and adaptation. Changing climatic patterns are expected to bring operational challenges, while electrification for decarbonization will result in more reliance on the grid as electricity demand increases in sectors such as transport and industry.
Time-of-use (TOU) and other complex rate structures are critical to managing an increasingly complex grid, achieving decarbonization goals and integrating distributed energy resources. Not to mention, if people get on the right one, they can actually reduce energy bills. So why aren’t more of us on them? According to EIA data, while TOU rates are available to 62 percent of U.S. residential customers, only 7.3 percent are enrolled in these plans.
Con Edison has a new initiative that will provide information on the installations of solar panels, battery storage, electric vehicle chargers and other technologies in its New York City and Westchester County service territories. The quarterly Con Edison Clean Energy Update will make it easier to track deployments of customer-owned clean energy technologies as these markets develop and expand.
Auto shoppers in America are more likely than ever before to consider buying a fully electric vehicle (EV), and new EV entries are responsible for much of the added consideration. These new entries, many from long-established vehicle manufacturers, are turning EV skeptics into likely EV considerers, according to the J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Electric Vehicle Consideration (EVC) Study released last week.
Power providers in the Northwest should acquire at least 3,500 MW of renewable energy resources by 2027 in order to ensure grid reliability while reducing emissions, a six-year plan from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council that presents a roadmap for the energy system recommends. The council also recommended that the region add between 750 and 1,000 average MW of energy efficiency to its portfolio by the end of 2027.
How does electric power reach our homes and workplaces? Via the grid – a vast network of electrical lines, transmission towers, transformers, and control and sensing equipment that carries electricity from power plants to where it’s used. The U.S. grid has been called the biggest machine ever built. And it has a pulse: an electric alternating current of 60 hertz (cycles per second) in the U.S.
Entergy Mississippi completed construction on a 100-megawatt renewable solar power station near Ruleville in the Mississippi Delta. The Sunflower Solar Station is the largest solar installation in Mississippi and will provide enough energy to power 16,000 homes. This facility is the first plant in what will be the largest expansion of renewable power in the state’s history.