Nov. 2020, Utility Dive. The Southern utility also hopes to learn about the impact of solar roofs and other smart technology on the grid and reliability, and on energy consumption and related costs, according to Shepard. The Mississippi smart neighborhood represents one of the latest moves among cities and communities looking to roofs for energy-saving opportunities. New York targeted its over 1.6 billion square feet of rooftop in November of 2019 via two laws, known as the “Sustainable Roof Laws,” mandating that any new roof construction include either a green roof system or feature solar photovoltaic panels. The laws are also designed to support the city’s Climate Mobilization Act, which aims to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2040 and carbon neutrality by 2050. As of Oct. 31, there were 107,019 completed solar roof projects in New York, with 5,519 projects currently being constructed, according to NYSolarMap.com. The proliferation of solar roofs is also supported by the lowering cost, with the cost of solar in New York falling from $4.95 per watt in 2012 to $2.07 per watt. Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE), an aggregated mapping data and emission insights tool, to 3,000 global cities. The solution can help cities understand their solar energy potential, in addition to estimating the carbon footprint of a city building and transportation options. https://insights.sustainability.google/
Cailin Crowe, Utility & Smart Cities Dive, Dec 1, 2020
- Southern Company subsidiary Mississippi Power, a utility that serves over 188,000 customers across 23 southeast Mississippi counties, recently announced a partnership to build what it says is the world’s first smart neighborhood to exclusively feature the Tesla Solar Roof.
- The Lauderdale County neighborhood will undergo the construction of about 45 homes in its initial phase, with plans to build up to 150 homes. Construction on the smart neighborhood is set to begin in early 2021.
- The homes will also feature technology like smart home automation; Tesla Powerwall batteries, which store energy to be available on-demand at any time; and energy-efficient equipment and appliances like smart thermostats and refrigerators, according to Mississippi Power spokesperson Jeff Shepard.
Mississippi Power and Tesla partnered earlier this summer to install the state’s first Tesla Solar Roof on a Habitat for Humanity home in nearby Hattiesburg, MS. The roof took under three days to be installed via Tesla-certified installer Cross Roofing.
The smart neighborhood’s initial installation of the roofs will be used as a research and development pilot project to learn how the roofs will perform in the southern Mississippi climate, said Shepard, noting these are the types of technologies that will be used for future home remodeling and neighborhood developments.
“It’s our job to know what kind of impact these technologies will have on our customers’ lives,” Shepard said.
The utility also hopes to learn about the impact of solar roofs and other smart technology on the grid and reliability, and on energy consumption and related costs, according to Shepard.
During its Q3 earnings call in October, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted further growth for the company’s solar roof product. Company executives cited the need to hire and train more installers as the solar division’s biggest obstacle, in addition to improving component packaging to decrease installation time.
The Mississippi smart neighborhood represents one of the latest moves among cities and communities looking to roofs for energy-saving opportunities. New York targeted its over 1.6 billion square feet of rooftop in November of 2019 via two laws, known as the “Sustainable Roof Laws,” mandating that any new roof construction include either a green roof system or feature solar photovoltaic panels. The laws are also designed to support the city’s Climate Mobilization Act, which aims to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2040 and carbon neutrality by 2050. As of Oct. 31, there were 107,019 completed solar roof projects in New York, with 5,519 projects currently being constructed, according to NYSolarMap.com. The proliferation of solar roofs is also supported by the lowering cost, with the cost of solar in New York falling from $4.95 per watt in 2012 to $2.07 per watt.
A number of other tech giants, including Google, are also heavily investing in the support of solar measures. Google recently announced the expansion of its Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE), an aggregated mapping data and emission insights tool, to 3,000 global cities. The solution can help cities understand their solar energy potential, in addition to estimating the carbon footprint of a city building and transportation options.
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- The “Unlocking City Ambition” webinar, hosted by Google and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), gathered a number of leaders from public and private sector organizations to push this message of urgency around climate action. The event highlighted how global cities can “leapfrog the constraints associated with lengthy climate studies” by using Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE) tool to virtually assess their carbon footprint and renewables potential.
- EIE uses Google’s aggregated mapping data and emissions insights to estimate the carbon footprint of a city’s buildings and transportation services, and to illustrate the city’s solar energy potential. Earlier this month, Google announced the expansion of this tool to 3,000 cities worldwide.
Google first launched its EIE tool in a handful of pilot cities in 2018, after forming a foundational partnership with GCoM to tap into the needs of local-level climate action. The tool was a “simple notion,” but when talking to cities in development, “it was clear that we were trying to chart out, what is the end-to-end climate action journey?” said Nithya Sowrirajan, director of Geo for Everyone at Google.
Understanding the roadblocks that local government leaders face in developing climate plans helped Google understand its partnership role, according to Sowrirajan. “We really felt it was our obligation to democratize any kind of Maps data that can be deployed for climate action,” she said.
By doing this, cities can better understand and map their carbon-reduction potential. “It’s not only about data,” said Eckart Würzner, lord mayor of Heidelberg, Germany. He and Edmonton, Canada, Mayor Don Iveson detailed how their respective cities have used EIE to inform decision makers, technical experts and even elected officials on emissions-saving strategies.
“We believe very strongly that there are fundamental democratic principles behind the use of open data,” Iveson said, noting that his city uses this data to unveil the economic potential of energy retrofits, renewable energy adoption and “all of the things that we know we need to scale up aggressively.”
“We don’t have time to make lots of mistakes and experiment endlessly,” he said.
Edmonton and other cities have particularly benefited from the tool’s capability to detail solar potential, which can be an “eye-opening” feature for cities that may only host a small percent of solar array installations despite their actual potential, Sowrirajan said. She pointed to Houston, which used EIE to assess its solar potential and set a yearly goal of 5 million megawatt hours.
Edmonton, on the other hand, used the tool to better understand the “winter-city applications” of solar technology. Iveson explained that in his city’s cold summers, solar panels can produce far beyond their manufacturer-rated output. “Even on short days, you can get quite a bit of juice out of a solar panel on a roof, provided you can keep the snow off it,” he said.
Iveson also highlighted the potential of using EIE to expand global collaborations in the fight against climate change. He said large cities are in a particularly unique position to template all of this data mapping and pass insights to smaller jurisdictions. “For me, this is all about scaling across municipal networks into smaller and rural communities,” he said.
Google Earth Director Rebecca Moore said on the webinar that overall environmental sustainability is “something we’ve been passionate about and committed to since our founding.” Google unveiled a number of climate commitments in mid-September, including promises to eliminate its entire carbon legacy and operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy in all data centers and campuses.
