Tag: electricity

State regulators reject settlement with Electricity Maine over customer complaints

May 29—Maine regulators on Wednesday rejected a proposed settlement with a competitive electricity provider, ruling that the agreement calling for refunds to customers and the opportunity to switch to different rate plans falls short of what’s needed to punish the company given that it has drawn hundreds of consumer complaints. The Public Utilities Commission voted […]

SSE Airtricity announces price decrease for electricity and gas customers

SSE Airtricity has announced it is to cut its standard household energy prices. A 10 per cent price decrease will be applied to both domestic electricity and gas rates from the beginning of July. Standing charges will remain unchanged. The announcement will affect around 250,000 electricity and 90,000 gas customers nationwide. It is the second […]

Scientists develop energy-efficient bricks made from waste — and they can reduce electricity bills by 5%

There’s a certain group of RMIT University researchers who likely won’t be offended if you call them brickheads. That’s because the Australia-based experts have developed an ingenious brick that replaces clay with glass waste and trash ash. The benefits of the achievement include preventing trash from going to the landfill, improved insulation, and lower manufacturing […]

Electricity grids creak as AI demands soar

There’s a big problem with generative AI, says Sasha Luccioni at Hugging Face, a machine-learning company. Generative AI is an energy hog. “Every time you query the model, the whole thing gets activated, so it’s wildly inefficient from a computational perspective,” she says. Take the Large Language Models (LLMs) at the heart of many Generative […]

Wholesale electricity costs fell by almost 30% over last year

Wholesale electricity prices have fallen by almost 30 per cent in the 12 months to April, new figures show. This comes despite a slight increase in electricity costs between March and April this year, according to figures published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Wholesale electricity prices, or what is paid for electricity from the […]

Unitil reports how pesky rodents mess with our electricity

HAMPTON — Unitil kicks off on Monday kicked off “Squirrel Week 2024,” its annual social media campaign aimed at raising awareness of the hazards that nature’s critters can create for electrical infrastructure and the risks to their safety as well. This is the third year that Unitil, a provider of electricity and natural gas to customers […]

Utilities are doubling their 5-year electricity demand projections—but high interest rates and California’s NEM 3.0 have U.S. solar in a holding pattern

Anyone paying a utility bill has certainly noticed that the cost of electricity has risen over the past couple of years—at a rate that has often outpaced recent high inflation. With electricity demand rising due to a number of factors, including everything from electric vehicle (EV) adoption to even cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence (AI), rates […]

Electric vehicles, heat pumps driving up electricity demand in Maine

May 17—New England’s grid operator is expecting Maine’s electricity use to soar in the coming decade to power heat pumps and a growing number of electric vehicles, despite the state’s rejection of policies calling for broader EV use. Maine is expected to maintain its position as a leader in electric heat pump installations. The state […]