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January 7, 2025

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.

October 31, 2023

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.

September 25, 2023

Restore OKC Brings Pecan Street’s Research Network to Oklahoma City

Restore OKC has teamed up with the University of Oklahoma and Pecan Street Inc. to help launch an energy efficiency and awareness program in northeast Oklahoma City. We’re already recruiting participants, conducting energy audits and installing equipment that will measure how these improvements affect participants’ energy use and costs.

September 5, 2023

Dr. Anissa Rodriguez Dickerman Named Pecan Street CEO

The Pecan Street Inc. board of directors has hired Anissa Rodriguez Dickerman, Ph.D. as chief executive officer. Dickerman’s tenure began September 1, 2023.

February 21, 2023

Pecan Street Seeks CEO Candidates

The Pecan Street Inc. board of directors is seeking an experienced and motivated leader to chart the next chapter for our groundbreaking climate-focused research and development organization. 

February 2, 2023

Pecan Street Starts 2023 with Leadership Transitions

After nearly five years as Pecan Street’s CEO, Suzanne Russo has transitioned to the organization’s board of directors. Bart Bohn, a partner at venture capital firm ATP and a long-time collaborator with Pecan Street, will serve as interim CEO while the board of directors conducts a search for a permanent chief executive. 

August 26, 2022

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.

July 19, 2022

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.

March 9, 2022

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.

Digital network illustration
March 1, 2022

Delaware Voluntary Participation Agreement

Following is a participant agreement for Pecan Street’s current volunteer recruitment in Delaware. By completing and submitting this form, you are agreeing to the terms outlined below. Please read this agreement carefully. It explains all of the roles and responsibilities for Pecan Street Inc. and the research participants. After reading the agreement, you will be […]

October 5, 2021

EVs and the Texas Grid (KXAN)

Pecan Street's Colin Rowan spoke with Eric Henrikson (KXAN-Austin) about whether the Texas grid can handle an influx of electric vehicles (yes!) and how these "rolling batteries" could (and should) be a solution for Texas leaders trying to increase the grid's resilience.

Illustration of dataport dots
June 14, 2021

University of Michigan Research Participant Agreement

Following is a participant agreement for Pecan Street’s current volunteer recruitment for a research project being conducted for Eaton Corporation.

Digital network illustration
April 26, 2021

Pecan Street Launches JupyterHub to Expand Access to Energy, Water & Transportation Datasets

Pecan Street launched new cloud computing resources to support researchers in unlocking insights from the world’s largest database on residential energy, water, and transportation use. Dataport JupyterHub is open to all current Dataport license holders.

March 5, 2021

Black History Month Blog Series Recap

Due to the winter storm and energy crisis in late February, we postponed our Black History Month blog series. We’re excited to be concluding the series now with a round-up of all our Black History Month blogs highlighting leading Black voices on climate, equity, and clean energy issues. Below you can read an expert from […]

February 24, 2021

Pecan Street on CNN: Texas goes it alone on electric power.

Pecan Street OpEd on CNN.com – Texas grid independence is being called into question after ERCOT failed to meet unprecedented electricity demand and millions of Texans went without power for days in sub-freezing temperatures. To put it mildly, people are mad. But despite a lot of political finger-pointing, I've seen few people pointing in the right direction.

November 2, 2020

Pecan Street Convenes Artificial Intelligence Working Group to Advance Soil Carbon Sequestration on Farms

Pecan Street Inc. and The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) have launched a globally unique AI for Soil Carbon Sequestration Working Group to explore new methods for using artificial intelligence (AI) to overcome the barriers to widespread adoption of climate- beneficial farming practices.

April 7, 2020

Greentech Media: The Solar ‘Duck Curve’ Might Look Quite a Bit Different Under Coronavirus

Greentech Media – As the coronavirus pandemic forces people across the country to shelter at home, utilities and grid operators are watching typical energy use patterns change in unpredictable ways, and trying to understand how this will affect their grid operations, power purchasing practices, and long-term plans. Austin, Texas-based Pecan Street Inc. may have some answers. 

February 21, 2020

Pecan Street Launches Free AI Solar Monitoring Service for Research Participants

By Esha Choudhary, database administrator, Pecan Street – Whether you’re trying to reduce your home’s use of fossil fuel electricity or simply want to unplug from the grid, knowing how well your rooftop solar system is performing is an important part of maximizing your investment. Few people want to monitor their system every day, so Pecan Street is piloting a service we developed that alerts users when their PV systems “underperform.”

February 1, 2020

Upcoming Events and Conferences

Heading to a conference or industry event? See if a Pecan Street staff member is on the agenda. Each month, we will update the public events at which our staff will appear.

January 22, 2020

Forget DER aggregators, grid-edge intelligence will be the hallmark of the utility of the future

January 21, 2020 Read this story at Renewable Energy World Suzanne Russo, CEO of Pecan Street, has a pretty good grip on the future of the electricity industry. That’s because her organization is designing, creating, testing, and collecting data about new, low-carbon grid-edge intelligent devices in a real-life neighborhood setting. Pecan Street started in 2009 […]

January 6, 2020

T&D World: The Energy Switch—A Residential Microgrid

By Scott Hinson, CTO, Pecan Street - The Energy Switch is designed to turn an unreliable generation resource that requires close attention by a utility into a much more beneficial load on the system.

December 23, 2019

Fully Charged Show Visits Pecan Street

The Pecan Street staff hosted Chelsea Sexton from Fully Charged a few weeks ago as they toured some of Austin’s energy-tech hotspots. Watch the Pecan Street episode here.

November 22, 2019

Greentech Media: A Texas-Sized Gas-for-Electricity Swap

Converting Texas homes to electric heat would reduce climate-warming pollution, save Texas households up to $452 annually on their utility bills, and flip the state from a summer-peaking to a winter-peaking system.

November 22, 2019

IEEE Spectrum: A Plug-and-Play Microgrid for Rooftop Solar

By Scott Hinson, CTO, Pecan Street - Pecan Street designed and built a residential energy-storage system that turns a home into its own microgrid. It’s a solution that addresses all of solar’s integration issues at once.

November 5, 2019

ZDNet: How autonomous vehicles will change car ownership

Pecan Street in Austin ran an eight-month pilot project in three neighborhoods, where residents could hail the shuttle with a text, phone call, or via the app. They could be picked up anywhere in the service area and go to any destination within the service area.

October 17, 2019

Pecan Street @ 10: The Mother of All Energy and Water Databases

By Grant Fisher, chief information officer, Pecan Street – Our greatest technical accomplishment is the development of the largest database of real-world energy and water use on the planet. But we didn’t set out to create the mother of all energy and water databases. Honest.

October 3, 2019

Utility Dive: ERCOT weathers steamy August, but could Texas become a winter-peaking system?

Shifting from gas to electricity for winter heating "would result in increased winter electricity demand peaks," the report found. "When combined with the reduction in summer peak demand, the increase in winter peak demand would flip Texas from a 'summer peaking' to a 'winter peaking' system."

October 3, 2019

E&E News: Blackouts are on the rise. So Austin is making a ‘microgrid’

Scott Hinson is the chief technology officer for Pecan Street Inc., a nonprofit research organization that focuses on ways to spread solar power to reduce the use of fossil fuels in electricity generation. Pecan Street is located in the Mueller neighborhood and has organized some volunteer homeowners to participate in the blackout experiment. It might expose them to infrequent losses of power.

September 30, 2019

Pecan Street Whitepaper Examines Emission and Grid Impact of All-Electric Residential Heating in Texas

A study commissioned by Pecan Street Inc. examining the possibility of converting single-family residential heating in the ERCOT service area from natural gas to electric power concluded that the state could achieve significant reductions in climate and local air pollution and save Texans money through lower monthly utility bills.

September 18, 2019

E&E News Visits Pecan Street on their Electric Road Trip

Pecan Street hosted Edward Klump and Mike Lee from E&E News as they started their 1,000 mile journey from Houston to Nashville in an EV. Along the way, they're stopping to write and share news about what's happening in this fast-growing market. Review their Week One video recap and read their blog post that dives into our vehicle to grid research.

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