Advanced Energy Perspectives

A Guest Post from Clean Edge.

As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prepares for July 29-Aug 1 listening sessions on its Clean Power Plan for existing power plants, a new report from Ceres and Clean Edge ranks the nation’s largest electric utilities and their local subsidiaries on their renewable energy sales and energy efficiency savings. The report finds that an increasing number of utilities are deploying lower carbon fuel sources, and that state policies can be a key driver in that performance.

Some hardcore technology in this week’s advanced energy news. Energy giant and AEE member General Electric is expanding its advanced energy product line to include fuel cells. Google is looking to shrink inverters. And utility San Diego Gas & Electric is getting ready to launch drones to check on transmission lines.

In 2007, Delaware established a Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU). The idea was to create an entity that would emulate the great success of Vermont’s efficiency utility, vaulting Delaware into a leading position in energy efficiency. Unfortunately, Delaware has continued to lag behind its neighbors – it was rated 22^nd in the country in ACEEE’s most recent scorecard.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) plan to regulate carbon emissions is just the latest challenge facing the U.S. electric power system. Technological innovation is disrupting old ways of doing business and accelerating grid modernization. Earlier this year, AEE released Advanced Energy Technologies for Greenhouse Gas Reduction, a report detailing the use, application, and benefits of 40 specific advanced energy technologies and services. This post is the first in a series drawn from the technology profiles within that report.

Behavioral energy efficiency (BEE) employs messaging grounded in behavioral science to produce simple, actionable messages that are relevant to customers and motivate them to save energy. Extensive research has found that the average utility customer spends nine minutes per year thinking about their energy use. When they do, they have two basic questions: How am I using energy and what can I do to save energy and money? BEE answers this question. Utilities opt customers into BEE programs, meaning savings can scale rapidly. Communications are delivered through multiple channels – e.g. web, mobile, mail – ensuring customers are engaged and focused on reducing energy consumption. Dozens of independent evaluations have found BEE programs consistently produce savings of 1.5% to 3.5% per household.

The electrical grid is an aging beast, cobbled together over the last century from disparate pieces to form the infrastructure on which all modern life depends. Sometimes it seems like we are teetering at the edge of disaster, a single storm or terrorist attack away from a devastating outage. Can resiliency save us?