Energy
Pecan Street Joins Eaton Team to Improve Grid Reliability with Renewables
(October 2, 2020 — AUSTIN, TX) Eaton Corporation has convened a team of researchers, including Pecan Street Inc., to develop a next-generation grid services solution to improve the overall efficiency of the electric grid and to optimize renewable energy generation.
We Don’t Have Time to Solve Problems One-at-a-Time. And We Don’t Have To.
By Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street - We can’t solve all of our problems independently – we don’t have time. And science tells us we don’t have to. So Pecan Street is adopting a Wicked Solutions approach to all our work. We will apply our unique capabilities to identify and prioritize the wicked problems that sit at the nexus of climate change mitigation and adaptation and focus our effort toward developing wicked solutions.
Utility programs have helped customers weather COVID. Will they continue?
By Clayton Johnson, Communications Coordinator - To show the impact of the relief package, we compared utility bills at the reduced rates to the standard, pre-COVID rate. Energy use in 2020 increased by 14% in April, 10% in May, 2% in June, and 4% in July compared to monthly averages from 2017-2019.
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.
Your Data in Action
Over the past several weeks, our work has been focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and the momentum behind the racial justice and equity movement. As always, our home energy database has been central to the work we've accomplished.
Pecan Street Featured on CNN’s “The Global Energy Challenge”
Pecan Street's Chief Technology Officer, Scott Hinson, was interviewed for CNN's "The Global Energy Challenge" about shifting energy usage due to COVID-19.
Pecan Street CTO Speaks with The Weather Channel About Summer Peak Energy Use and COVID Pandemic
Pecan Street's Chief Technology Officer, Scott Hinson, was interviewed by the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore today about the coincidence of summer peak energy usage and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pecan Street Deepens COVID-19 Home Energy Analysis with Survey of Volunteer Network
We surveyed participants to learn what behavioral changes might be affecting their energy profile under shelter-in-place. Learn more here.
Austin Energy Leads Nation in Municipal Solar Capacity
Congratulations to Austin Energy for being named first in the nation for per capita municipal utility solar capacity. On Wednesday, Environment Texas released their Shining Cities 2020 report that names the top U.S. cities for solar energy.
COVID-19 is Changing Residential Electricity Demand
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street - As the patterns of our lives shift in response to COVID-19, we decided to take a look at how our research participants’ energy profiles have changed. Not surprisingly, they’re using more energy. But how much, and for what?
Concern Over High Residential Utility Bills Due to COVID Sparks Action from Utilities
By Clayton Johnson, Communications Coordinator - The overall decline in energy demand due to COVID-19 shelter in place (SIP) orders has been widely reported in recent weeks. However, Pecan Street’s recent analysis shows that in contrast with the overall trend in declining energy demand, residential demand is up.
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.
Pecan Street Welcomes 9 Companies to PLATFORM Program
By Bart Bohn and Elisa Gilson, Pecan Street – Pecan Street has filled its second cohort of companies participating in its PLATFORM for Product Launch program. Let's meet them!
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.”
White Paper: Exploiting the Energy-Water Nexus to Reduce Emissions and Conserve Water
By Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street – Our new white paper uses Pecan Street's unique datasets of home energy and water use data to estimate the climate emissions potential of residential electricity and water conservation and identify the household energy uses with the highest water intensity and the water uses with the highest energy intensity.
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 […]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Pecan Street @ 10: An Innovation Lab in the Heart of Texas’ Innovation Capital
By Scott Hinson, CTO, Pecan Street – We need our electricity generation, use, and storage to be smarter, better connected, and more efficient. Thanks to what we’ve built over the last 10 years, these are the kinds of advances we are able to accelerate at Pecan Street’s lab.
How is an Electric Grid Like an Octopus?
By Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street – We know that achieving the kind of emission reductions we’ll need to ward off the worst consequences of climate change will require a more flexible, responsive and sophisticated grid. And that will take new thinking. But when it comes to rethinking our grid, we may have some guidance from natural systems that were designed long before the first watt ever powered a lightbulb.
Pecan Street @ 10: A Real-World Plug and Play Test Bed for Innovators Around the World
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street - Over the past 10 years, we’ve worked with global brands you’ve heard of and startups you haven't on products ranging from HVAC load management hardware to electric vehicle charging to home automation.
Pecan Street @ 10: Putting People and Privacy First in a Data-Centric World
By Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street – We may be in the research field, but with our participants, we’re in the trust business. The reason we have been able to develop our new technologies and share the research insights we’ve discovered over the last ten years is that regular people have been willing to share their information with us.
Pecan Street @ 10: Creating an Army of Citizen Scientists, One Soldier at a Time
By Rachel Jenkins, director of operations, Pecan Street Calling Dan McAtee an enthusiastic participant in Pecan Street’s research is a massive understatement. Not only does Dan volunteer for nearly every research project we announce, he makes suggestions about what we should research next. He’s a one man focus group.