As the costs of solar batteries continue to decline, more and more homeowners are adding energy storage to their solar installations: in California, for instance, one in every twenty solar installations now also includes a solar battery. As utilities become more familiar with the benefits of distributed solar + storage on the grid, from added operational flexibility to decreased electricity demand, several utilities in the Northeast are now offering large incentives for home energy storage pilot programs.
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How to read your SCE bill
Southern California Edison (SCE) is one of the largest utility companies in both California and the United States. Based in Rosemead, they provide natural gas and electricity to about 15 million people in the southern part of the state.
Continue readingUnderstanding time-of-use (TOU) rates
Across the country, utilities are beginning to introduce innovative rate structures for residential energy consumers. These rate structures–from time-of-use rates to demand charges to real-time-pricing–all have a common goal: to incentivize customers to consume energy during times when the cost of generating electricity is cheap, and to disincentive energy consumption when the cost of generating electricity is high. As a result, understanding the ins and outs of a time-of-use rate can help you reduce your monthly cost of energy.
Continue readingHow to read your PG&E bill
If you live in California, there’s a good chance that you’re a customer of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). This company, based in San Francisco, provides natural gas and electricity to about 16 million people throughout northern California, making it one of the largest utilities in the United States.
Continue readingSchneider Energy Center review
The modern home is a smart home, with everything from voice activated speakers to thermostats you can control from your home. But to truly be “smart” about your own home, you need to have insight into–and control over–more than just the color of your desk lamp. Enter smart panels: the new technology that’s taking home energy insights and the solar-plus industry to the next level. One such smart panel is Schneider Electric’s Square D Energy Center. We sat down with the team at Schneider to learn more about their brand new product.
Continue readingThe Span Smart Panel complete review
Just about every home has an electrical panel–it’s the metal box in your basement that you have to fiddle with every time you overload a surge protector or your lights aren’t working for some weird reason. Span is a company looking to modernize this ancient but essential technology with their Smart Panel: an industry-changing energy management product.
Continue readingTop electric vehicle myths
Have you ever heard that electric vehicles (EVs) are just as bad for the environment as gasoline-powered cars? Don’t believe it for a second! In this article, we’ll bust that myth, plus other misconceptions about EVs.
Continue readingWhy utilities want you to have a battery
Although utilities and the solar industry haven’t always had the most positive relationship across the country, there’s one distributed technology that utilities have been very quick to embrace: energy storage. When installed at a home or business, energy storage systems provide myriad benefits to both the owner of the system, as well as to the electricity grid as a whole. As a result, many utilities throughout the country are now actively encouraging the adoption of energy storage systems. Here are just a few of the reasons that utilities want you to have a battery.
Continue readingHow do electric meters work?
Unless you live in an off-grid home, you have an electric meter. Your electric meter tells your utility how much electricity you’ve used over a given time period so that they know how much to charge you on your monthly bill. There are a few different types of electric meters, all of which function in slightly different ways, including net meters that work for solar homes. In this article, we’ll break down the different types of meters, how they work, and why you should care what kind of electric meter you have.
Continue readingSolar news: August 7th, 2020
In this week’s Solar News Roundup, Community Energy enters an agreement to build a 50 megawatt (MW) solar project for a municipality in Kentucky, and BP announces plans to cut its oil and gas output by 40 percent by 2030.
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