Solar
Connecting Energy Data with Voices of Real Homeowners
Guest Blog by Hannah Danaë Goodman of CAPA Strategies – No one likes to spend on their energy bill, but for many families across the country, utilities aren’t just an inconvenience but a huge financial burden. For families living paycheck to paycheck, high energy bills can be a serious source of stress that forces them to do burdensome mental math about cutting costs in other areas, finagling payment plans, or reaching out to family members for assistance.
Achieving Affordability, Resilience and Abundance with Virtual Power Plants
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – The transformative potential of virtual power plants (VPPs) is poorly understood. Your average electricity customer has no idea what VPPs are. Even in the legislative and regulatory universe, VPPs are considered tomorrow’s technology and have not yet been fully integrated into grid planning efforts. They should be.
A Plan for a 21st Century Grid – Part 4: A Strong, Resilient Grid Starts With a Plan
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – In Texas and across the country, customers deserve a grid that will keep us warm during the next Uri, that will rebound quickly after the next tropical storm, and that will keep us cool during ever-hotter summers. One that’s stronger, cleaner, cheaper and smarter. And that will take a plan.
A Plan for a 21st Century Grid – Part 3: Fossil Fuel Thinking is Clouding Our Future
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – Despite the catastrophic failure of natural gas power plants during Winter Storm Uri, fossil fuel electricity generators are still considered more reliable than other electricity solutions, be it solar, wind, batteries, demand response, etc. The state’s biggest solution to Uri was a multi-billion dollar investment in….more gas plants.
A Plan for a 21st Century Grid – Part 2: Can Texas’ Shaky Grid Handle the Exponential Growth Ahead?
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – In its recent demand forecast, ERCOT predicted electricity demand could nearly double. Not in the next 50 years, but the next 5. And crypto and data center growth is an overwhelming culprit. What's Texas going to do about it?
A Plan for a 21st Century Grid – Part 1: Our Historic Hands-off Approach Isn’t a Plan.
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll look at some of the big grid challenges Texas has faced recently and how leaders have responded. Not to spoil the ending, but it should be a clarion call for the rest of the country to think strategically and urgently about the grid.
Pecan Street Awarded $7.9 Million to Develop Solar Congestion Solution, Improve Solar Access for LMI Customers
The U.S. Department of Energy has granted a five-year, $7.9 million Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program (GRIP) grant to Pecan Street Inc. and its partners to develop and deploy technology that will allow utilities to manage solar supply and energy demand throughout the grid.
Meet Some of the Groups Making Solar More Accessible
by Jill Harlow – The most common question I heard repeated over the three days: How did you do your community engagement? Learning to authentically center on community needs and goals takes time, hard work, and often comes with many false starts and missteps.
eGauge Tour: A Quick Tutorial for Pecan Street Participants
By Rachel Jenkins, Director of Operations, Pecan Street – If Pecan Street has installed an eGauge in your home and you’re looking for a quick guide for viewing your data, you’re in the right place. Below you’ll find everything you need to know to log in and nerd out.
Community, Local Experts and Showing Up Have Been Key to Pecan Street’s Expansion
By Rachel Jenkins, Director of Operations, Pecan Street – My recent trip to Culebra, Puerto Rico, where we’re recruiting about 50 families to participate, was further proof that community, local experts and simply “showing up” have been key to our efforts.
Pecan Street’s Expansion to Puerto Rico Promises Energy Data Goldmine for Researchers and Electricity Customers Everywhere
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – Our expansion into Puerto Rico is unique; nowhere else on Earth can you find the island’s combination of energy challenges and energy ambition.
Streamlining Home Assessments for Energy Justice
By Hayley Hanway, University of Michigan – Ecoworks, Pecan Street, Jefferson East, and the University of Michigan are helping Detroit homes to benefit from decarbonization, electrification, and renewable energy integration.
Want to Save the Planet? Call an Electrician First. Better Yet, Become an Electrician Yourself.
By Richard Smith – We’ve heard for years that “we all have a role to play” in creating a cleaner economy. As the electrification trend ramps up, we’re about to see just how critical electricians will be.
Inflation Reduction Act Sets United States on Path to Clean Energy Economy
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 sparks the country’s largest investment to address climate emissions and rapidly accelerate the transition to clean energy. Following is a statement from Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street Inc.
Help Save The Grid, Get Free Stuff: Our New Study Needs 50 More Participants in Austin
By Rachel Jenkins, director of operations, Pecan Street Inc. – Want to reduce your home’s grid impact without turning up your AC? You may be a perfect fit for a study we’re conducting with the University of Michigan that will test automatic, on-the-fly conservation events without adjusting your thermostat.
Canary Media: Smart Electric Panels in Homes Could Prevent Overtaxing the Grid
Canary Media – Utilities are worried that homes switching to electric heating, electric cooking and electric-vehicle charging will create major new strains on their power grids. And homeowners looking to go all-electric face steep costs if they need to upgrade their grid connections to handle bigger electrical loads. A new report suggests that both problems could be addressed by the latest smart electric panels.
During Texas’ Heatwave, Every Degree Matters. And so Do Conservation and Efficiency.
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – For the second time in a week, Texas’ grid operator (ERCOT) and local utilities yesterday issued “calls for conservation” as the state bakes under a prolonged heatwave. Among the requests: increase your thermostat setpoint to 78 degrees to reduce state-wide air conditioner load. It’s unsurprising that air conditioning increases electricity demand during a heatwave. But it may surprise you to know just how powerful a driver it is and how close it can push the state toward a real problem.
Pecan Street’s JupyterHub Can Help Rapidly Scale and Iterate Your Research
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – To allow better access and more sophisticated analysis of this data, we launched our own Jupyterhub, a multi-user server for Jupyter Notebooks designed to support large-scale analysis by using GPU and memory based on a server rather than a local machine. It also allows multiple users – like groups of students or researchers – to share the same document at the same time.
More Clean Power in Texas will Require More Grid Transmission and DER Development
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – The ERCOT power grid is back in the news. Texas experienced its hottest May on record and June has seen consistent record-breaking temperatures as well. ERCOT has been busy trying to balance extremely high grid demand with various electric generation plant outages. On June 12, ERCOT recorded its highest ever grid demand of over 75GW. That record only lasted one week before grid demand climbed to more than 76 GW on June 20. And we're wasting emission-free wind and solar power.
First Look at High-Resolution Home Energy Data in Puerto Rico Suggests Vastly Different Challenges and Opportunities.
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – The first Pecan Street home in Puerto Rico is online, and we already see some differences compared to the hundreds of homes in our network in Texas, New York, California and Colorado.
Pecan Street Inc. and GAVA Selected to Lead Solar Energy Innovation Network Project in Austin
Pecan Street Inc. and GAVA were selected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to participate in the Solar Energy Innovation Network (SEIN) to discover transformative ways of accelerating equitable residential solar adoption in historically underserved communities. Seven other projects around the country were selected to participate in the SEIN program.
A Tale of Two February Freezes – Can Last Year’s Grid Failure and This Month’s Storm be Compared?
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – The recent freeze gave us an opportunity to compare electricity use in our research network before and during the event to how people used power during last year’s crisis. Did they learn any tips or tricks? Did they panic heat their homes to prepare for power outages? Did they charge their cars any differently? Here's what we saw.
A Year After Winter Storm Uri, a Look at Smart Solutions to Strengthen the Grid
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street Inc. – Microgrids get name-dropped a lot. And for good reason. The promise of a smarter, more resilient, and cleaner grid is enough to make any energy geek swoon. But given all the buzz, there’s a short supply of guidance on how we can deploy microgrid technology at scale. Pecan Street’s new analysis puts our energy data expertise to work to answer part of the microgrid riddle – how can big data enable widespread microgrid deployment?
The Better Your Data, The Better Your Microgrid
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street Inc. – Microgrids get name-dropped a lot. And for good reason. The promise of a smarter, more resilient, and cleaner grid is enough to make any energy geek swoon. But given all the buzz, there’s a short supply of guidance on how we can deploy microgrid technology at scale. Pecan Street’s new analysis puts our energy data expertise to work to answer part of the microgrid riddle – how can big data enable widespread microgrid deployment?
COP 26 Leaders Should Center Equity in Everything They Do – The Climate Fight Depends on It
Climate change requires all hands on deck. And it requires solutions designed to improve the way the energy system works for everyone. At COP 26, leaders are gathered to develop a global strategy for addressing climate change, and increasingly they’re prioritizing energy equity in the process.
Pecan Street to Develop Toolkit for Distributed Energy Resources Adoption at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
(AUSTIN, TX — June 22, 2021) The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation awarded Pecan Street Inc. a $40,000 grant to bring its unique data and research capabilities to developing a Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) Toolkit for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Pecan Street will partner with Huston-Tillotson University in Austin to develop resources that support DER deployment on HBCU campuses to provide new revenue opportunities and support community resilience centers. The effort will produce an online DER planning and implementation toolkit geared towards the unique aspects of Texas HBCUs and technical support resources.
How Did Texas Solar Perform in a Snowstorm?
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – Last year, we looked at how Austin’s stay-at-home orders affected energy use. This week, we dove into the winter storm data to see how solar panels performed and how they may have eased overall demand on the grid.
What’s Holding Back the Energy Future We’ve Been Promised?
Over the last 10 years of conducting research on electricity use and advanced technologies like electric vehicles and solar systems, my colleagues at Pecan Street have found there are four key technology roadblocks that are holding back innovation and adoption of cleantech products, services and systems.
The Role of Consumer Data in Clean Energy Deployment
An article by Pecan Street's CEO Suzanne Russo was recently published by Forbes about the role of consumer data regulation in accelerating clean energy deployment. This is Russo's first article to be published as a member of the Forbes Technology Council.
COVID Five Months in: A Sustained Increase in Residential Electricity
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street - Pecan Street has been monitoring electricity use and generation from hundreds of homes in our research network for nearly a decade. Many of these homes have rooftop solar and electric vehicles, and we’ve been measuring each home’s total energy use as well as use from individual circuits, like heating/cooling, EV charging, refrigerator, etc. With all this data at our fingertips, we decided to take a look at how our participants’ energy profiles have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.