Times Are Changing Quickly in the Power Utility Space

One of our interns who spent the summer working on our companion site SustainabilityRoleModels.com  wrote a good article on Southern California Edison’s numerous sustainability initiatives, and arranged for me to speak with one of SCE’s spokespeople, Evan Birenbaum.  Late yesterday, Evan and I talked about all the good stuff associated with how a utility, in this case, an IOU (investor-owned utility), goes about minimizing the ecological effects of delivering power to 14 million people, maintaining five million consumer and business accounts.

Of course, a big part of this is renewable energy procurement. In 2012, 20% of the electricity SCE procured came from renewable power sources. That’s 15 billion kilowatt hours of electricity that was generated from geothermal, wind, solar, small hydropower, and biomass resources – and this is going to go up in a big way when the enormous wind farms in Tehachapi are completed soon.  For those of you who have never been there, check out the link above; the place is awe-inspiring.

Evan and I covered the other topics one would expect: smart meters, demand response, the integration of electric vehicles, etc.; no real surprises there.  He also mentioned a news item I had overlooked: Edison International, SCE’s parent company, recently bought distributed solar energy giant Socore, whose business is establishing micro-grids for large corporate customers, e.g., the Walmarts of the world.

One could say that the company is competing with itself, hastening the shift from the traditional utility “we generate it and send it to you” model. This is certainly a recognition that “the time’s they are a changin” in the utility space.