In The News
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.
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.
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 […]
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.
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.
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.
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.
Austin SHINES testing solar + batteries as a clean, dispatchable grid solution
By Andrea Tosi, power systems specialist, Pecan Street Solar energy is ideal as a clean energy resource in places like Texas, where sunshine is abundant. But even in Texas, the sun doesn’t shine 24/7. This variability results in reliability issues for the grid. Energy Storage Systems (ESS) are crucial as solar penetration increases in Austin.
Utility Dive – Utilities have multiple ways to drive lower energy use
The data for Kopalle's research came from Pecan Street, an Austin-based non-profit that manages a neighborhood electricity test bed. Almost 1,000 homes have volunteered to have advanced metering infrastructure installed, capturing circuit-level, minute-by-minute consumption data along with generation data from dozens of homes with solar panels.