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Energy Storage
Lightshift Energy, a developer, owner and operator of battery energy storage projects across the U.S., and KeyBanc Capital Markets (KBCM), on Oct. 16 announced the close of a $75 million credit facility that will support Lightshift’s rapidly growing pipeline of energy storage projects across the East Coast.
Customer Service
For water and electric utilities, it is critical to communicate with customers about potential leaks, rate changes and outages. Speed and clarity are essential to ensuring water is not wasted and customers know about outages. This boosts customer satisfaction. The use of texting by the City of Bryan, Texas, and Bryan Texas Utilities has yielded a wide range of benefits.
Generation
Kentucky public power utility Frankfort Plant Board is seeking proposals to meet all capacity and energy requirements associated with its retail load beginning June 1, 2029.
Generation
Plans were unveiled on Oct. 15 for Project Horizon, a two-gigawatt artificial intelligence campus in West Texas.
Customer Service
Utilities face several challenges as they address an increasing number of outages. As customers grapple with these rising power interruptions, 65% report that they’re frustrated with utilities’ impersonal communications. However, utilities can now address this communications challenge by taking advantage of AI. Rather than simply reacting to outages as they happen, power providers can embrace intelligent, customized, and proactive messaging that humanizes these crises for their customers.
Electricity Markets
Two separate reports recently released by the New York Independent System Operator "provide important insights into evolving challenges of maintaining reliability of the high voltage electric system as consumer demand increases and generation retires," the grid operator said on Oct. 14.
Electricity Markets
Ron Earl, who became the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency’s third General Manager in 1998, died on October 6, his 82nd birthday.
Generation
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Oct .14 announced the fourth Texas Energy Fund (TxEF) loan agreement for a 460 megawatt natural gas power plant in Fairfield, Texas. Calpine Corporation will build the plant which is expected to begin generating power for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas power region before summer 2026.