Southern Company and its Alabama Power and Georgia Power subsidiaries announced Tuesday Smart Neighborhood initiatives in Atlanta and suburban Birmingham, Alabama.
The Smart Neighborhoods will include homes equipped with distributed energy resources and smart home appliances and technologies. They will provide Southern Company and the subsidiaries with information that could further enable the smart grid and lead to new programs, products, and services for customers.
“In the rapidly changing energy landscape, we are focused on meeting customers’ current and future energy needs through cutting-edge research and technology,” Southern Company Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Kimberly S. Greene said. “These collaborative research projects with Alabama Power, Georgia Power and our partners will deepen our understanding of how distributed energy resources interact with the electric grid and how emerging technologies improve customers’ lives.”
Southern Company, Alabama Power, Georgia Power and the Southern Company Energy Innovation Center partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Electric Power Research Institute on the initiatives.
The Alabama project includes a community-scale microgrid, solar panels, battery energy storage and a natural gas generator that supplements power from the existing electric grid. Each home in the neighborhood has emerging energy-efficient building features and technology, including a high-efficiency heat pump, an intelligence home comfort system with an Infinity Touch thermostat, voice-activated security, smart locks, cameras, interconnected appliances, triple-pane windows and LED lighting.
All 62 homes in the Alabama Smart Neighborhood have been sold.
Each home in the Georgia Power Smart Neighborhood will feature individual rooftop solar installations and in-home battery energy storage and will be served by Georgia Power. They will also have energy technologies such as advanced heating and cooling systems, LED lighting and optimal insulation a well as home automation devices including smart thermostats, smart locks and voice control.
Construction is underway, with the grand opening scheduled for later this year.
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