Electricity
Report Release: The Status and Promise of Advanced M&V
The innovative Nest thermostat helped to mainstream the concept of a smarter home. Now, high-resolution smart meters, numerous communicating smart thermostats, nonintrusive load monitoring, and new cloud-based software are transforming the concept of smarter buildings more broadly. You may not have heard of all of these devices, but your local…
Energy Independence for Exeter, UK, by 2025
Exeter City Futures, a UK-based community interest company, is working to make the Exeter City region in the South West of England energy independent and congestion-free by 2025. A new report commissioned by Exeter City Futures, Energy Independence 2025, provides independent confirmation of many of…
Why We Still Need To Discuss Grid Defection
The rapidly declining costs of distributed energy resources (DERs), including rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV) and behind-the-meter batteries, have introduced new dynamics into a traditionally slow-moving electricity industry. This paradigm shift has ushered us into a new era where previous assumptions about how, where, and at what scale electricity is best…
Solar Embrace
More than a year ago, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) announced its Shine Program would focus on community-scale solar. We claimed that community-scale solar could be procured at costs close to utility-scale solar, unlocking a 5–30 GW market by 2020. However, we could not have predicted the success of our initial…
The Energy Web Foundation: Bringing Blockchain Technology to the Grid
Blockchain technology—the technology underpinning the Bitcoin virtual currency—is being discussed as one of the most potentially disruptive technologies since the Internet. Blockchains are a combination of information technology, cryptography, and governance principles that enables transactions to occur without the need for a third party to establish…