News

As Greentech Media reports, New York has made huge structural adjustments to the utilities market in its recent regulation reforms, thereby meeting the needs of a more distributed, consumer-focused energy system. In the New York Public Services Commission’s recently released report - ‘Reforming Energy Vision, the commission calls for an overhaul of the regulation of the state’s distribution utilities. The commission also acknowledges that the current distribution system cannot meet the needs of the changes in the energy market.

Malcolm Woolf, AEE's senior vice president for policy and government affairs, was featured on E&E TV's On Point this week. He discussed the role of advanced energy and how states will be able to incorporate advanced energy technologies in their plans to comply with U.S. EPA's pending regulations for existing sources. Watch the full interview here.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects reports that renewables made up 92 percent of the 1,150 MW of new domestic electrical generating in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2014. Solar, wind and hydropower provided 84.5 percent of generating capacity in March alone. Read more here.

SunPower and Google have teamed up to create a $250 million program to finance residential solar leases for rooftop systems that use SunPower panels. SunPower brings $150 million to the table while Google brings the remaining $100,000. According to Chuck Boynton, SunPower CFO, the program will “help make solar accessible to more families.” Read more here.

The Department of Energy has announced a $15 million program - the Solar Market Pathways Program, to help communities develop multi-year solar plans to install affordable solar electricity for homes and businesses. This is part of the Administration’s goal to double renewable energy generation by 2020. Read more here.

Google has signed a deal with Iowa Power Company MidAmerican Energy to supply 407 MW of wind power to Google’s data center in Iowa. This will be the internet company’s biggest clean power contract yet. The deal also includes both direct energy generation from MidAmerican’s wind farms and MidAmerican’s renewable energy certificates from other wind projects. Read more here.

The modern solar cell has celebrated its 60th anniversary. In an email to GreenTech Media, John Perlin, author of Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy explained that, "the silicon solar cell project got its start in early 1953 when Daryl Chapin began working on the problem of providing small amounts of intermittent power for remote, humid locations where dry cell batteries would degrade rapidly."

In its newly released findings, AEE member Retroficiency has shown that if the more than 30,000 commercial buildings in New York City adjusted their thermostats just one degree upward in summer and one degree lower in winter, they could save up to $145 million per year. This is one of the insights from Retroficiency’s Building Genome Project - a study that does high-level assessments of publicly available data in large portfolios. The project is aimed at providing policymakers, utilities and large ESCOs with a snapshot of what is possible using its analytics. It’s first project is the New York City study. Read more here.

Illinois Utility company Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) has partnered with automation company Nest Labs to offer $140 in rebates to  customers who purchase a Nest Learning Thermostat™ and participate in its demand response program. Additionally, from now through May 31, ComEd customers will receive a $100 rebate from ComEd for signing up to participate in ComEd’s Smart Ideas® AC Cycling Pilot that features Nest’s Rush Hour Rewards™, and an additional $40 rebate for participating in the pilot all summer. Read more here.

The US subsidiary of IKEA announced last Thursday that it is buying the 98 MW Hoopeston Wind installation in eastern Illinois as part of its efforts to offset its energy use with renewable energy generation. Construction on the project has not yet begun. IKEA’s Chief Financial Officer Rob Olson said that by the time the wind farm is built and running as planned for 2015, it will be capable of generating power equivalent to 165 percent of the company’s U.S. electricity needs. Read more here.

AEE member EnerNOC has bought utility management software firm EnTech. This is EnerNOC’s third acquisition this year. EnTech’s software supports more than 200,000 utility tariffs and will be integrated into EnerNOC’s energy intelligence software to provide more detailed information on forecasting energy costs. Read more here.

The Senate Finance Committee has approved a two-year extension for most tax provisions that expired at the end of 2013. Some of the tax credits that stayed in tact include; tax credit for research and experimentation for small businesses that have no income tax liability, the wind production tax credit and bonus depreciation. AEE’s Todd Keller was quoted in the story:

AEE Member Pattern Energy teamed up with Samsung to complete Canada’s largest wind power facility. The South Kent wind project is now fully operational and produces 270 MW of power and will provide renewable energy for 100,000 Ontario homes. It will also allow the province to achieve its clean energy goal.

AEE Member Silver Spring Networks has announced that it is teaming up with U.K. startup Smarter Grid Solutions to develop software that will indicate when there is too much solar or wind power for the grid to handle. This will allow it to balance distributed energy resources at scales ranging from microgrids to regional networks. Read more about the partnership here.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. added over 13,500 MW of new generating capacity in 2013. Natural gas accounted for over 55 percent of utility scale generation and was followed by grid-scale solar energy which accounted for 22 percent. Nearly half of the capacity generation was in California, which has a mandate for 33 percent renewable energy by 2020. Read more here.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, has announced that the Department of Energy is tweaking its Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program. This is the program that allocated loans to green automakers between 2009 and 2011 and helped fund Tesla and Fisker. The program will now offer loans to vehicle parts makers, as well as automakers, that are making fuel-efficient parts like next-generation engines, new types of powertrains, light-weight auto

AEE member SolarCity is offering another $70.2 million in asset-backed notes as securitization for distributed solar generation. The company also offered $54.4 million of an “aggregate principal amount of Solar Asset Backed Notes, Series 2013-1” which yielded 4.80 percent late last year. Find out the insights that this 2014-1 securitization strategy presents here.

California has developed a new building code which will require a grid-smart thermostat which comes with demand response capability in every facility. This means that every new or retrofit thermostat, HVAC system, networked lighting controller and building automation system in the state must come ready for two-way, automated utility-to-customer energy management. Read more here.

“Today, the Senate Finance Committee took a critical step toward modernizing America’s energy infrastructure by approving a tax extenders package that will support continued investment in advanced energy technologies,” said Todd Keller, vice president for federal policy at Advanced Energy Economy, a national business association. “Business needs stability in tax treatment, and the expiration of vital advanced energy tax credits at the end of last year was disruptive to the marketplace. This legislation goes a long way toward providing the certainty needed to drive the innovation and deployment of advanced energy technologies and services that make our nation’s energy more secure, clean and affordable.

The federal government has produced two new online interactive maps to show the location of the nation’s wind farms, how quickly they were built and the impact that they may have on the energy landscape. One map is housed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s website and shows how fast the farms were constructed. The second is the U.S. Geological Survey mapping tool for assessing the environmental impact of wind farms on a national scale. Read more here.

Greentech Media has compiled a list of technology companies serving the U.S. electric power market and are transforming the industry. Featured on the list are AEE members Opower, Silver Spring Networks and SolarCity. See the complete compilation here.

Tesla has began to add a triple-layer metal shield made of titanium and aluminium to the under bodies of its vehicles to serve as protection for batteries. Tesla says any vehicles made before March 6 can be retrofitted with the shield free of charge upon request. Read more here.