February 9
Consumers Energy Grid Upgrades Yield Swifter Power Restoration
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Crediting grid upgrades over recent years, Consumers Energy recently announced that it managed to restore power to nearly 90 percent of customers who lost power in 2023 within 24 hours. More work is scheduled for this year, as part of the company’s ongoing Reliability Roadmap – a long-term plan to improve reliability throughout Michigan. As to last year, Consumers added that it managed to reduce the length of the average customer outage during normal weather to less than three hours.
Demand response (DR) programs are critical in optimizing energy consumption and ensuring grid reliability. While pilot projects provide valuable insights, turning them into fully-fledged programs requires careful consideration and strategic planning. In 2022, more than 10 million Americans were enrolled in a residential demand response program.
All 50 states, plus DC and Puerto Rico, took actions related to grid modernization during 2023, with the greatest number of actions relating to energy storage deployment, utility business model reforms, distribution system planning, energy storage interconnection rules and performance-based regulation, according to a new report from the N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center (NCCETC).
According to a recent report from the Illinois-based ComEd, the electric company managed a variety of gains last year, including becoming the most reliable utility in America through a mix of smart grid improvements, clean energy deployments and new customer programs. That reliability title was granted by PA Consulting, which credited ComEd with fewer outages in 2023 than at any other point in its history.
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Industry News
Are you itching to fight the climate crisis by breaking up with your fossil-gas appliances and internal-combustion-engine car, but feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the task? Pro-electrification nonprofit Rewiring America has just launched a free tool to help you electrify your home and commute.
A virtual power plant program in Ontario, run by Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator in partnership with grid-edge flexibility provider EnergyHub, has enrolled 100,000 homes since the program launched in mid-2023. The Save on Energy Peak Perks program is the fastest growing flexibility program in EnergyHub’s portfolio and is capable of reducing peak demand by up to 90 MW.
University Park is a small suburb south of Chicago, built around sprawling warehouses for companies like Clorox, Amazon and Solo Cup that attract a steady stream of diesel truck traffic. Its residents, 88 percent of whom are African American, are also exposed to pollution from a steel and wire processing facility relocated there from a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood, as well as steel mills and an oil refinery in nearby Northwest Indiana.
Six New York electric companies are collaborating with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and an approved list of program contractors to electrify and decarbonize buildings and homes statewide through increasing the use of heat pumps. New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG), Rochester Gas & Electric (RG&E), National Grid, Central Hudson Gas & Electric, Con Edison and Orange & Rockland Utilities are involved in the New York State Clean Heat Program.
