GM’s Big EV Incentives, Military Geothermal Plans & AI’s Energy Shakeup!
1.) GM teams up with PG&E on resi Vehicle-to-Everything pilot, with eligible customers receiving up to $4,500 in incentives for GM Energy home products like the GM Energy V2H Bundle or Home System. Six 2024 EV models eligible and 2025 model years to be added soon.
2.) U.S. Air Force and DOD designate a team including GE Vernova, Sage Geosystems, the Energy and Geoscience Institute, and the University of Utah to explore deployment of utility-scale geothermal for future renewable and hydrogen energy microgrids at military bases. Sage will provide its geothermal technology while GE Vernova offer capabilities related to power conversion, energy storage, and microgrids.
3.) Distributed energy storage company Base to work with Texas Bandera Electric Cooperative in its residential battery program offering homeowners battery backup systems. Bandera is developing distributed energy storage network to provide grid services, increase resilience, and provide economic value to its members. Battery Storage Subscription Program will have Base providing members with batteries for monthly subscription fee but no upfront cost.
4.) Cybersecurity company Dragos releases case study outlining a cyberattack from Chinese Volt Typhoon hackers on Massachusetts municipal utility Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments. The utility was able to identify and eliminate the threat, but hackers apparently infiltrated the utility about nine months prior to being exposed.
5.) Chinese tech giant Baidu unveils newest AI models - Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5 that compete with Open AI and Deepseek in terms of performance and cost. Baidu claims its multimodal foundation model Ernie 4.5 "outperforms GPT-4.5 in multiple benchmarks while priced at just 1% of GPT-4.5. This strongly suggests much lower possible future power consumption, with several technologies powering creating new operational efficiencies although energy consumption metrics were not disclosed.