#gtm intermediate

[indian-petrochem]

HDPE prices in IndiaSep 14, 2021

8Oil prices extended gains on Tuesday, hovering near a six-week high, on signs another storm could affect output in Texas this week even as the U.S. industry struggles to return production after Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast.

Brent crude rose 15 cents, or 0.2% to $73.66 a barrel by 0048 GTM, having gained 0.8% the previous day. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude also climbed 23 cents, or 0.3%, to $70.68 a barrel, after rising 1.1% on Monday.

[globalmediacampaign]

Explore what’s in store for Amazon RDS at re:Invent 2020

Join us at re:Invent 2020, a free 3-week virtual conference, from November 30 to December 18. This year’s virtual conference is going to be the industry event of the year, offering five keynotes, 18 leadership sessions, and unlimited access to hundreds of sessions, including 10 sessions on Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). In this post, you’ll find all of the Amazon RDS sessions offered at re:Invent so you can plan and prepare for this year’s 3-week event. The sessions are categorized by technical level, from intermediate to expert, including a leadership session, deep dive sessions, and what’s new sessions for Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora. If you haven’t done so already, register today so that you can view the schedules for each session and gain access to over 500 AWS sessions at re:Invent 2020. Leadership Session BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE WITH AWS DATABASES – Shawn Bice, Vice President, Databases Data is at the core of every application, and companies are looking to use data as the foundation for future innovation in their applications and their organizations. In this session, Shawn Bice, VP of Databases, discusses how organizations are building for the future with fully managed purpose-built databases. From helping organizations move existing database-heavy applications to the cloud, to learning from some of the earliest adopters, Shawn shares strategies on how to get started building for the future. Join Shawn to go deep (with demos) on some of the newest database innovations. WEEK 1 WEDNESDAY, DEC. 2 | 9:15AM – 10:15AM (PST) AMERICAS: WATCH FIRST THURSDAY DEC. 3 | 9:15AM – 10:15AM (SGT) ASIA-PACIFIC THURSDAY DEC. 3 | 9:15AM – 10:15AM (GMT) EUROPE All times subject to change. Level 200 – Intermediate DAT201 – What’s New in Amazon Aurora Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL compatible relational database managed service with the speed, reliability, and availability of commercial databases at one tenth the cost. In this session, get an overview of Aurora and learn about recently announced features, such as enhancements to Global Database, snapshot export, and Microsoft Active Directory integration. This session also covers how to get started using Aurora to support existing and new applications. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Tony Petrossian, General Manager, RDS & Aurora DAT202 – What’s New in Amazon RDS Amazon RDS is a fully managed database service that allows you to launch an optimally configured, secure, and highly available database with just a few clicks. It manages time-consuming database administration tasks, freeing you to focus on your applications and business. In this session, see all the new capabilities launched for Amazon RDS across different engines and review the latest available features. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Sirish Chandrasekaran, Director, RDS Open Source Databases DAT207 – What’s New in Amazon RDS for Oracle Amazon RDS makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale Oracle databases in the cloud. This session dives deep into the new features and best practices that make your Amazon RDS for Oracle database deployments highly available, scalable, and durable. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Michael Barras, Principal Database Solution Architect, RDS Oracle DAT208 – What’s New in Amazon RDS for SQL Server Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale SQL Server databases in the cloud. This session will explore recent features that were designed to help run your SQL Server workload on RDS faster, save on cost, and allow for more use cases! FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Eugene Stepanov, Senior Specialist Solution Architect, RDS SQL Server DAT203 – MySQL Options on AWS: Self-Managed, Managed, Serverless In recent years, MySQL has become a top database choice for new application development and migration from overpriced, restrictive commercial databases. In this session, see an overview of the MySQL and MariaDB options available on AWS. Join this session to do a deep dive on Amazon RDS, a fully managed MySQL service; Amazon Aurora, a MySQL-compatible database with up to five times the performance; and many additional innovations. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Yoav Eilat, Senior Product Manager, RDS & Aurora DAT204 – Beyond AWS DMS: programs and partners to ace your migration A successful cloud migration goes beyond just migration tools. Enterprises and organizations often need technical advice, migration support, and financial incentives for their portfolio of databases. AWS offers just that. Learn how AWS can holistically support your migration efforts through expertise, programs like Database Freedom, solutions like Database Migration Accelerator, and a growing network of migration partners. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Sandeep Brahmarouthu, GTM Specialist, Database Freedom DAT205 – Enterprise Database Transition: License-free cloud Databases In this session, learn from bp’s Head of Quantitative and Analytical Solutions, Cetin Karakus, and his lead engineer on how bp transitioned a large-scale, mission-critical data analytics platform from a commercial database platform to the Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL open-source solution using the Database Freedom Program in an operationally fail-safe and isofunctional way. In this session, bp shares its experiences migrating with the help of AWS Database Freedom and Aurora PostgreSQL engineers and lessons learned along the way. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Paola Lorusso, Specialist Solutions Architect, Databases Level 300 – Advanced DAT301 – Deep Dive on Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility is a relational database managed service that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source PostgreSQL. This session highlights Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility’s key capabilities, including low-latency read replicas and Multi-AZ deployments; reviews the architectural enhancements that contribute to Aurora’s improved scalability, availability, and durability; and digs into the latest feature releases. Finally, this session walks through techniques to migrate to Aurora. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Grant McAllister, Senior Principal Engineer, RDS DAT302 – Deep Dive on Amazon Aurora with MySQL Compatibility Amazon Aurora is a fully managed relational database service that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source MySQL. This session highlights Aurora with MySQL compatibility’s key capabilities, including push-button compute scaling and fast database cloning; reviews the architectural enhancements that contribute to Aurora’s improved scalability, availability, and durability; and digs into the latest feature releases. Finally, this session walks you through the techniques that you can use to migrate to Aurora. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Murali Brahmadesam, Software Director, Aurora DAT303 – Deep Dive on PostgreSQL Databases on Amazon RDS PostgreSQL is an open-source database that is growing in popularity because of its rich features, vibrant community, and compatibility with commercial databases. This session covers key Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL functionality, availability, and management. In this session, review general guidelines for common user operations and activities such as upgrades, tuning, and security for PostgreSQL instances. Join this session to go deep into the capabilities of the service and review the latest available features, which give you the background to solve different technical challenges. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Jim Mlodgenski, Principal Database Engineer, RDS DAT312 – Dive Deep into AWS Schema Conversion Tool and AWS DMS In this session, learn how to convert and migrate your relational databases, nonrelational databases, and data warehouses to the cloud. AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT) and AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) can help with homogeneous migrations as well as migrations from different database engines, such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon Aurora. Join this session for a demo of the latest features added to AWS SCT and AWS DMS. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): John Winford, Senior Product Management Manager, AWS DMS Level 400 – Expert DAT401 – Amazon Aurora Storage Demystified Amazon Aurora is a high-performance, highly scalable database managed service with MySQL and PostgreSQL compatibility. One attribute that sets Aurora apart is its innovative storage system that is optimized for database workloads and purpose-built to take advantage of modern cloud technology. In this session, hear directly from the team that built Aurora’s storage system. They detail how the system is designed, how it works, and what you need to know to get the most out of it. FEATURED SPEAKER(S): Anupriya Mathur, Senior Product Manager, Aurora We look forward to having you join us at re:Invent 2020 this year. Register for re:Invent today and start planning your journey. About the Author Natisha Solanki is a Senior Technical Product Manager at Amazon Web Services. She helps customers modernize their Oracle and SQL Server databases and move to managed databases on AWS. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/explore-whats-in-store-for-amazon-rds-at-reinvent-2020/

[glrjournal]

Topic: The Effectiveness of CLT in the ESL Context of Pakistan

Abstract:

             The study investigates the effectiveness of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in Public sector colleges of Pakistan. The experimental study traces improvement in comprehension and writing skills of intermediate level students (studying in grades 11 and 12). An experiment group and a control group are used to study the effects of CLT on learners’ progress. A pre-test and post-test are carried out to measure any improvement in the students’ cognitive learning process. The experiment group is given treatment through vigorous intervention of CLT based activities. The control group is taught through the traditional method of GTM. The data collected from the two groups are analyzed using SPSS. The results show a significant improvement in the learning process, comprehension and writing skills of the students in the experiment group. The analysis proves the appropriateness of CLT for Pakistani ESL context.

Weblink: http://glrjournal.com/article/The-Effectiveness-of-CLT-in-the-ESL-Context-of-Pakistan

Download PDF: http://glrjournal.com/jadmin/Auther/31rvIolA2LALJouq9hkR/ZLqRmLRFRA.pdf

Keywords:.

[lyndastreaming]

Create a Go-To-Market Plan

When you launch a new product or enter a new market, it’s crucial to have both a roadmap that sets you up for success and the means to track the growth of your program. In this course, discover how to build and develop a go-to-market (GTM) plan for your next product or service. Join renowned marketing author Deirdre Breakenridge as she takes you through the steps needed to bring your product or service to the world. Deirdre helps you discern whether you need a GTM plan, and shows how to build a product strategy that’s tailored to the market and customer base you aim to reach. She shares methods for pricing and promotion, and explains how to drive better channel performance, evaluate KPIs and metrics, align your team for launch, and more.

Topics include:

Determine when it is necessary to build a go-to market plan. Define audience segmentation. Recall the purpose of a product vision. Recognize the benefits of a channel strategy. Explain how to use digital and social media to share your story and drive customers to engage with your launch promotions. Determine the KPI for four types of goals. Summarize the importance of flexibility when building a measurement model.

Duration: 1h 36m Author: Deirdre Breakenridge Level: Intermediate Category: Marketing Subject Tags: Enterprise Marketing Software Tags: ID: f9e459af9ce465af61382469d2c955e9

Course Content: (Please leave comment if any problem occurs)

Welcome

The post Create a Go-To-Market Plan appeared first on Lyndastreaming.

source https://www.lyndastreaming.com/create-a-go-to-market-plan/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=create-a-go-to-market-plan

[automaticpostinfluencer]

Plains asking oil producers to voluntarily cut output – Bloomberg – Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. (NYSE:PAA)

Pipeline operators are asking oil producers to voluntarily reduce their output, in the clearest sign yet that a growing glut of crude is overwhelming storage capacity, Bloomberg reports.

Plains All American Pipeline (NYSE:PAA) sent a letter this week asking its suppliers to scale back production, while Plains and Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE:EPD) sent letters requiring customers to prove they have a buyer or place to offload the crude they are shipping, according to the report.

Ryan Sitton, a member of the Texas Railroad Commission, says on Twitter that pipeline companies are running out of storage space for oil as coronavirus related lockdowns cause demand to plunge.

On Friday, prices for physical delivery of several key crude grades in North America plunged to the lowest levels in decades, a clear indicator that North America’s storage system is nearing its limit.

West Texas Intermediate crude in the heart of the Permian Basin plunged yesterday to $13.01/bbl, the lowest since 1999, while Western Canada Select neared $5/bbl and Wyoming Asphalt Sour crude reportedly was bid as low as $0.95/bbl yesterday.

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from WordPress http://justtoosilly.com/2020/03/29/plains-asking-oil-producers-to-voluntarily-cut-output-bloomberg-plains-all-american-pipeline-l-p-nysepaa/

[hotspreadpage]

7 Google Tag Manager courses to prioritize in 2018

If you love data (and what marketing expert doesn’t?), then learning Google Tag Manager should be high on your priority list this year.

Unfortunately, many spend so much time on Google Analytics that GTM gets pushed to the wayside. Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a powerful, versatile tool that helps you track and manage your own website data.

Since understanding analytics is increasingly important for businesses of all sizes, there’s no better time to start learning GTM than right now.

So what exactly does Google Tag Manager do for you? In a nutshell, this tool lets you easily add snippets of code called tags to your site. These tags track things your visitors do.

For instance, you could set up tags to track how many people download a specific file, which channels bring visitors to your site, and even how quickly visitors scroll through your pages. The tags then send your information to your third-party sites of choice, such as Google Analytics or Bing Ads.

The GTM web interface is easy to use and requires no in-depth coding skills, so you can stay on top of your tracking without relying on your web developer to do everything for you.

Getting started with Google Tag Manager isn’t always an intuitive process. You’ll probably want to seek out some training instead of trying to figure things out as you go.

Whether you’re brand-new to this tool or you have some basic knowledge about it already, here are seven courses that will help you get the hang of GTM and take charge of your data.

1. The 2018 Google Analytics Bootcamp on Udemy

If you’re not sure where to start learning GTM, the 2018 Google Analytics Bootcamp on Udemy is a great place to begin. I’ve found that this course is unique among the many other Google Analytics courses out there because it doesn’t just teach you the basics of Google Analytics – it also shows you how to combine that tool with Google Tag Manager.

GTM is essential for making the most of Google Analytics, yet many marketers don’t learn it until long after they’ve mastered the GA basics. Learning both together is a smart way to ensure you make quick progress right out of the gate.

The 2018 Google Analytics Bootcamp on Udemy will get you up to speed with both Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

If you know a little bit about Google Analytics already, but you want to start getting more out of it, you will most likely find this course helpful. You’ll learn how to set up a Google Analytics property the right way, read and understand reports, and track different kinds of data using Google Tag Manager.

If you’re an intermediate-level marketer, some of this course’s Google Analytics information may be familiar to you already, but it’s still a great introduction to GTM.

I was able to get this course during a Udemy sale for less than the original cost, and with the course you’ll get lifetime access to three hours of instructional videos, several supplemental resources, and a certificate of completion.

Udemy has frequent sales, so if this price is a little steep for you now, keep an eye on the course – you may be able to snag it at a discount later.

2. Google Tag Manager Fundamentals course by Google

If you’re just getting started with Google Tag Manager, why not go straight to the source for information?

Google’s own course provides a solid and comprehensive overview of using GTM. And like Google’s other analytics courses, this course is free. Just keep in mind that you’ll probably want to combine this course with at least one other.

This will ensure you get a well-rounded perspective on GTM.

After you finish the Google Tag Manager Fundamentals course, you can brush up on your skills with some of Google’s other free courses

3. Google Tag Manager Essential Training on Lynda.com

If you’ve ever browsed through Lynda.com’s extensive library of tech-related videos, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that they offer a Google Tag Manager course.

This course is just over two hours long and provides an overview of the most important aspects of using GTM, from creating containers to understanding the data layer.

Google Tag Manager Essential Training on Lynda.com

If you don’t already have a Lynda.com subscription, prices start at $25/month. You may also be able to get free access to the site through your workplace, school, or public library.

4. Google Tag Manager YouTube Series by Weboq

YouTube can be a great place to learn about almost anything, including Google Tag Manager.

If you’re a beginner or intermediate-level marketer, you may find Weboq’s GTM playlist very useful, even though it’s not a course per se. This playlist starts with the basics and tackles more complex topics later on.

If you want to learn to do something specific with GTM – like installing Hotjar or remarketing with AdWords, for instance – you’ll find plenty of specific, step-by-step how-tos here.

Weboq’s Google Tag Manager YouTube playlist starts with the basics

5. Google Tag Manager Tutorials on YouTube by Measureschool

Measureschool’s channel is another good resource for learning about Google Tag Manager on YouTube. There’s a lot of content here, directed towards a wide range of skill levels – beginners as well as advanced users will be able to find something helpful.

This channel is updated with new videos regularly, so if you like the material, check back for fresh GTM tips and tutorials every week or two.

Measureschool publishes new Google Tag Manager tutorials on YouTube regularly

6. Master the Fundamentals of Google Tag Manager by CXL

This results-oriented course, led by marketing expert Chris Mercer, is designed to take you from beginner to proficient in GTM in just eight classes.

Starting from the very first class, which walks you through setting up a tag, you’ll practice essential hands-on GTM skills. This course also gives you access to 10 video lessons that explain the more conceptual side of GTM, such as understanding what tags, triggers, and variables are.

After you finish the course, you’ll get a certificate of completion. This course is on the pricey side at $299, but if you’re motivated and want to see results ASAP, it may be worth the cost.

CXL’s beginner-level Google Tag Manager course will get you up and running in eight classes

7. Google Tag Manager Workshop by LunaMetrics

Online classes are convenient and accessible, but sometimes, the ability to ask questions and discuss new concepts in person is priceless.

If you learn best in a real-life classroom environment, LunaMetrics’ in-person GTM training sessions might be ideal for you. These day-long workshops are offered in major cities across the U.S., from Los Angeles to Boston.

Cities where LunaMetrics holds training sessions for Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and more. Source

Prices start at $799 for a one-day workshop. While this isn’t a cheap way to learn Google Tag Manager, keep in mind that you’re also getting a unique opportunity to network with other marketers and collaborate while you learn – something that’s hard to replicate over the internet.

Wrapping up

Google Tag Manager is a must-have tool for every marketer and data-savvy webmaster out there. While it has a bit of a learning curve, GTM opens up tons of possibilities for tracking and improving your site’s performance, so it’s well worth putting in the time and effort to learn how to use it.

Which of these Google Tag Manager courses are you going to focus on this year?

  Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer for No Risk SEO, an all-in-one reporting platform for agencies. You can connect with Amanda on Twitter and LinkedIn, or check out her content services at amandadisilvestro.com.

7 Google Tag Manager courses to prioritize in 2018 syndicated from https://hotspread.wordpress.com

[kellykperez]

7 Google Tag Manager courses to prioritize in 2018

If you love data (and what marketing expert doesn’t?), then learning Google Tag Manager should be high on your priority list this year.

Unfortunately, many spend so much time on Google Analytics that GTM gets pushed to the wayside. Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a powerful, versatile tool that helps you track and manage your own website data.

Since understanding analytics is increasingly important for businesses of all sizes, there’s no better time to start learning GTM than right now.

So what exactly does Google Tag Manager do for you? In a nutshell, this tool lets you easily add snippets of code called tags to your site. These tags track things your visitors do.

For instance, you could set up tags to track how many people download a specific file, which channels bring visitors to your site, and even how quickly visitors scroll through your pages. The tags then send your information to your third-party sites of choice, such as Google Analytics or Bing Ads.

The GTM web interface is easy to use and requires no in-depth coding skills, so you can stay on top of your tracking without relying on your web developer to do everything for you.

Getting started with Google Tag Manager isn’t always an intuitive process. You’ll probably want to seek out some training instead of trying to figure things out as you go.

Whether you’re brand-new to this tool or you have some basic knowledge about it already, here are seven courses that will help you get the hang of GTM and take charge of your data.

1. The 2018 Google Analytics Bootcamp on Udemy

If you’re not sure where to start learning GTM, the 2018 Google Analytics Bootcamp on Udemy is a great place to begin. I’ve found that this course is unique among the many other Google Analytics courses out there because it doesn’t just teach you the basics of Google Analytics – it also shows you how to combine that tool with Google Tag Manager.

GTM is essential for making the most of Google Analytics, yet many marketers don’t learn it until long after they’ve mastered the GA basics. Learning both together is a smart way to ensure you make quick progress right out of the gate.

The 2018 Google Analytics Bootcamp on Udemy will get you up to speed with both Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

If you know a little bit about Google Analytics already, but you want to start getting more out of it, you will most likely find this course helpful. You’ll learn how to set up a Google Analytics property the right way, read and understand reports, and track different kinds of data using Google Tag Manager.

If you’re an intermediate-level marketer, some of this course’s Google Analytics information may be familiar to you already, but it’s still a great introduction to GTM.

I was able to get this course during a Udemy sale for less than the original cost, and with the course you’ll get lifetime access to three hours of instructional videos, several supplemental resources, and a certificate of completion.

Udemy has frequent sales, so if this price is a little steep for you now, keep an eye on the course – you may be able to snag it at a discount later.

2. Google Tag Manager Fundamentals course by Google

If you’re just getting started with Google Tag Manager, why not go straight to the source for information?

Google’s own course provides a solid and comprehensive overview of using GTM. And like Google’s other analytics courses, this course is free. Just keep in mind that you’ll probably want to combine this course with at least one other.

This will ensure you get a well-rounded perspective on GTM.

After you finish the Google Tag Manager Fundamentals course, you can brush up on your skills with some of Google’s other free courses

3. Google Tag Manager Essential Training on Lynda.com

If you’ve ever browsed through Lynda.com’s extensive library of tech-related videos, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that they offer a Google Tag Manager course.

This course is just over two hours long and provides an overview of the most important aspects of using GTM, from creating containers to understanding the data layer.

Google Tag Manager Essential Training on Lynda.com

If you don’t already have a Lynda.com subscription, prices start at $25/month. You may also be able to get free access to the site through your workplace, school, or public library.

4. Google Tag Manager YouTube Series by Weboq

YouTube can be a great place to learn about almost anything, including Google Tag Manager.

If you’re a beginner or intermediate-level marketer, you may find Weboq’s GTM playlist very useful, even though it’s not a course per se. This playlist starts with the basics and tackles more complex topics later on.

If you want to learn to do something specific with GTM – like installing Hotjar or remarketing with AdWords, for instance – you’ll find plenty of specific, step-by-step how-tos here.

Weboq’s Google Tag Manager YouTube playlist starts with the basics

5. Google Tag Manager Tutorials on YouTube by Measureschool

Measureschool’s channel is another good resource for learning about Google Tag Manager on YouTube. There’s a lot of content here, directed towards a wide range of skill levels – beginners as well as advanced users will be able to find something helpful.

This channel is updated with new videos regularly, so if you like the material, check back for fresh GTM tips and tutorials every week or two.

Measureschool publishes new Google Tag Manager tutorials on YouTube regularly

6. Master the Fundamentals of Google Tag Manager by CXL

This results-oriented course, led by marketing expert Chris Mercer, is designed to take you from beginner to proficient in GTM in just eight classes.

Starting from the very first class, which walks you through setting up a tag, you’ll practice essential hands-on GTM skills. This course also gives you access to 10 video lessons that explain the more conceptual side of GTM, such as understanding what tags, triggers, and variables are.

After you finish the course, you’ll get a certificate of completion. This course is on the pricey side at $299, but if you’re motivated and want to see results ASAP, it may be worth the cost.

CXL’s beginner-level Google Tag Manager course will get you up and running in eight classes

7. Google Tag Manager Workshop by LunaMetrics

Online classes are convenient and accessible, but sometimes, the ability to ask questions and discuss new concepts in person is priceless.

If you learn best in a real-life classroom environment, LunaMetrics’ in-person GTM training sessions might be ideal for you. These day-long workshops are offered in major cities across the U.S., from Los Angeles to Boston.

Cities where LunaMetrics holds training sessions for Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and more. Source

Prices start at $799 for a one-day workshop. While this isn’t a cheap way to learn Google Tag Manager, keep in mind that you’re also getting a unique opportunity to network with other marketers and collaborate while you learn – something that’s hard to replicate over the internet.

Wrapping up

Google Tag Manager is a must-have tool for every marketer and data-savvy webmaster out there. While it has a bit of a learning curve, GTM opens up tons of possibilities for tracking and improving your site’s performance, so it’s well worth putting in the time and effort to learn how to use it.

Which of these Google Tag Manager courses are you going to focus on this year?

 Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer for No Risk SEO, an all-in-one reporting platform for agencies. You can connect with Amanda on Twitter and LinkedIn, or check out her content services at amandadisilvestro.com.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/15/7-google-tag-manager-courses-to-prioritize-in-2018/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2018/03/7-google-tag-manager-courses-to.html

[sheilalmartinia]

7 Google Tag Manager courses to prioritize in 2018

If you love data (and what marketing expert doesn’t?), then learning Google Tag Manager should be high on your priority list this year.

Unfortunately, many spend so much time on Google Analytics that GTM gets pushed to the wayside. Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a powerful, versatile tool that helps you track and manage your own website data.

Since understanding analytics is increasingly important for businesses of all sizes, there’s no better time to start learning GTM than right now.

So what exactly does Google Tag Manager do for you? In a nutshell, this tool lets you easily add snippets of code called tags to your site. These tags track things your visitors do.

For instance, you could set up tags to track how many people download a specific file, which channels bring visitors to your site, and even how quickly visitors scroll through your pages. The tags then send your information to your third-party sites of choice, such as Google Analytics or Bing Ads.

The GTM web interface is easy to use and requires no in-depth coding skills, so you can stay on top of your tracking without relying on your web developer to do everything for you.

Getting started with Google Tag Manager isn’t always an intuitive process. You’ll probably want to seek out some training instead of trying to figure things out as you go.

Whether you’re brand-new to this tool or you have some basic knowledge about it already, here are seven courses that will help you get the hang of GTM and take charge of your data.

1. The 2018 Google Analytics Bootcamp on Udemy

If you’re not sure where to start learning GTM, the 2018 Google Analytics Bootcamp on Udemy is a great place to begin. I’ve found that this course is unique among the many other Google Analytics courses out there because it doesn’t just teach you the basics of Google Analytics – it also shows you how to combine that tool with Google Tag Manager.

GTM is essential for making the most of Google Analytics, yet many marketers don’t learn it until long after they’ve mastered the GA basics. Learning both together is a smart way to ensure you make quick progress right out of the gate.

The 2018 Google Analytics Bootcamp on Udemy will get you up to speed with both Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

If you know a little bit about Google Analytics already, but you want to start getting more out of it, you will most likely find this course helpful. You’ll learn how to set up a Google Analytics property the right way, read and understand reports, and track different kinds of data using Google Tag Manager.

If you’re an intermediate-level marketer, some of this course’s Google Analytics information may be familiar to you already, but it’s still a great introduction to GTM.

I was able to get this course during a Udemy sale for less than the original cost, and with the course you’ll get lifetime access to three hours of instructional videos, several supplemental resources, and a certificate of completion.

Udemy has frequent sales, so if this price is a little steep for you now, keep an eye on the course – you may be able to snag it at a discount later.

2. Google Tag Manager Fundamentals course by Google

If you’re just getting started with Google Tag Manager, why not go straight to the source for information?

Google’s own course provides a solid and comprehensive overview of using GTM. And like Google’s other analytics courses, this course is free. Just keep in mind that you’ll probably want to combine this course with at least one other.

This will ensure you get a well-rounded perspective on GTM.

After you finish the Google Tag Manager Fundamentals course, you can brush up on your skills with some of Google’s other free courses

3. Google Tag Manager Essential Training on Lynda.com

If you’ve ever browsed through Lynda.com’s extensive library of tech-related videos, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that they offer a Google Tag Manager course.

This course is just over two hours long and provides an overview of the most important aspects of using GTM, from creating containers to understanding the data layer.

Google Tag Manager Essential Training on Lynda.com

If you don’t already have a Lynda.com subscription, prices start at $25/month. You may also be able to get free access to the site through your workplace, school, or public library.

4. Google Tag Manager YouTube Series by Weboq

YouTube can be a great place to learn about almost anything, including Google Tag Manager.

If you’re a beginner or intermediate-level marketer, you may find Weboq’s GTM playlist very useful, even though it’s not a course per se. This playlist starts with the basics and tackles more complex topics later on.

If you want to learn to do something specific with GTM – like installing Hotjar or remarketing with AdWords, for instance – you’ll find plenty of specific, step-by-step how-tos here.

Weboq’s Google Tag Manager YouTube playlist starts with the basics

5. Google Tag Manager Tutorials on YouTube by Measureschool

Measureschool’s channel is another good resource for learning about Google Tag Manager on YouTube. There’s a lot of content here, directed towards a wide range of skill levels – beginners as well as advanced users will be able to find something helpful.

This channel is updated with new videos regularly, so if you like the material, check back for fresh GTM tips and tutorials every week or two.

Measureschool publishes new Google Tag Manager tutorials on YouTube regularly

6. Master the Fundamentals of Google Tag Manager by CXL

This results-oriented course, led by marketing expert Chris Mercer, is designed to take you from beginner to proficient in GTM in just eight classes.

Starting from the very first class, which walks you through setting up a tag, you’ll practice essential hands-on GTM skills. This course also gives you access to 10 video lessons that explain the more conceptual side of GTM, such as understanding what tags, triggers, and variables are.

After you finish the course, you’ll get a certificate of completion. This course is on the pricey side at $299, but if you’re motivated and want to see results ASAP, it may be worth the cost.

CXL’s beginner-level Google Tag Manager course will get you up and running in eight classes

7. Google Tag Manager Workshop by LunaMetrics

Online classes are convenient and accessible, but sometimes, the ability to ask questions and discuss new concepts in person is priceless.

If you learn best in a real-life classroom environment, LunaMetrics’ in-person GTM training sessions might be ideal for you. These day-long workshops are offered in major cities across the U.S., from Los Angeles to Boston.

Cities where LunaMetrics holds training sessions for Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and more. Source

Prices start at $799 for a one-day workshop. While this isn’t a cheap way to learn Google Tag Manager, keep in mind that you’re also getting a unique opportunity to network with other marketers and collaborate while you learn – something that’s hard to replicate over the internet.

Wrapping up

Google Tag Manager is a must-have tool for every marketer and data-savvy webmaster out there. While it has a bit of a learning curve, GTM opens up tons of possibilities for tracking and improving your site’s performance, so it’s well worth putting in the time and effort to learn how to use it.

Which of these Google Tag Manager courses are you going to focus on this year?

  Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer for No Risk SEO, an all-in-one reporting platform for agencies. You can connect with Amanda on Twitter and LinkedIn, or check out her content services at amandadisilvestro.com.

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/15/7-google-tag-manager-courses-to-prioritize-in-2018/

[keepon--keepinon]

The 10 Stories That Defined Energy Storage in 2017

Energy storage proved itself in 2017.

The industry stepped up with two major, high-speed deployments to resolve grid emergencies. Utility-scale projects got bigger and longer lasting. Major international conglomerates bought up storage startups. And all the major solar developers started getting into the game.

Much of the action remained at the pilot stage. But some projects showed that storage economics already make sense without subsidies, grants or other interventions -- in the right circumstances, of course.

GTM will be diving deep on these themes at the Energy Storage Summit in San Francisco December 12-13. In the meantime, here's a roundup of the key developments from 2017.

Storage backs up Southern California grid after record gas leaks

Aliso Canyon just might be the biggest energy storage story ever. 

The details are well known in the industry -- not so much outside of it.

Here's the gist: California suffered the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, resulting in constraints gas for peak power generation around L.A. and San Diego; to meet the shortfall, the state deployed 100 megawatts of storage across several sites in a stunning six months.

The episode showed that storage can respond to capacity constraints far more quickly than traditional power plants, and can slip more easily into populous areas like suburban San Diego and Los Angeles.

That success -- the feared blackouts never materialized over the summer peak season -- puts storage in the toolkit for future grid crises. And it bolsters the case for using distributed batteries to meet local capacity needs, shifting away from reliance on gas plants. 

This could only happen because California had already prioritized storage policy and built out a regulatory understanding of the technology. If other states want the flexibility to respond to surprises as quickly as California did, they need to put in the work now.

Solar-plus-storage contracts drive prices to new lows

The year started with a solar-plus-storage record: AES inked a contract for a Kauai project at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will combine 28 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with 20 megawatts of five-hour duration batteries, producing 11 percent of the island's electricity.

That project managed to outsize an earlier Tesla/SolarCity deal on the island and shave a few cents off the unit price. In May, another project made this one look like an appetizer.

Tucson Electric Power contracted with NextEra Energy Resources to build out a major solar-plus storage project at a 20-year PPA rate below 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will pair 100 megawatts of solar generation with a 30 megawatt/ 120 megawatt-hour storage system. (That's as big as the AES Escondido system, which was the largest of its kind until Tesla outdid it in Australia).

That announcement turned heads and set of a flurry of number crunching, as analysts and rivals tried to unpack how such a low price could be possible. The investment tax credit plays a role, as does NextEra's ability to source equipment at aggressive price points. 

Crucially, this is happening in sunny Arizona, where the abundance of solar generation is creating value for dispatchable power. Storage thrives when its flexibility is compensated, and Arizona's regulated utilities can do just that.

Non-wires alternatives start to pencil out on their own

New York authorized its utilities to make money by avoiding more expensive grid upgrades.

Some of these non-wires alternatives utilize batteries, like the Marcus Garvey Apartments microgrid that went up this spring. That project showed that creative regulatory changes and targeted incentives can encourage innovative projects.

More impressive is the storage project that works without such assistance.

Arizona Public Service pulled off this feat with its Punkin Center project, which utilizes a 2 megawatt/ 8 megawatt-hour battery system from AES to avoid a wires upgrade for a remote desert town.

Load growth there would have required a 20-mile cable upgrade, but APS determined it could fix the issue with a locally-sited battery for less than half the upfront cost. This wasn't driven by a regulatory imperative to re-envision the grid or fight climate change; it simply made economic sense.

Leaders from both companies will discuss the project during a fireside chat at the Energy Storage Summit.

Big energy companies bought their way into storage

Legacy energy companies snapped up storage startups throughout the year.

It started with Demand Energy's acquisition by European utility and renewables developer Enel in January. Then the Finnish engine company Wartsila bought Greensmith in May. Scottish mobile power provider Aggreko picked up Younicos in July for $52 million.

Later on, AES signed a joint venture with Siemens to merge their storage practices under the name Fluence.

This continues a trend from last year, in which Engie took a controlling stake in Green Charge and French energy giant Total picked up Saft in the largest battery acquisition ever.

The impact of these acquisitions hasn't fully materialized yet. Once complete, though, the deals promise to expand the storage industry in meaningful ways.

They give once small companies a major balance sheet to assure customers and financiers they can be trusted with a large contract. They also give storage startups the resources to expand faster than they would otherwise.

Green Charge, Greensmith and Demand Energy have all hinted at international expansion to come, although we haven't seen that materialize just yet. AES explicitly referenced Siemens' sales presence in 160 companies as a motivation for the partnership. That expansion may materialize in the coming year.

It's official: All the biggest solar developers are looking at storage too

Solar-plus-storage has inspired eager chatter for some time now, but this year companies finally started to follow through on the premise.

The top utility-scale solar installers have either developed storage or are actively pursuing it, GTM reported in June. Many of them have begun bidding hybrid projects, which means we could start seeing a bump in deployments in the next two or three years. Installed and operating projects are still rare.

GTM Research analyst Daniel Finn-Foley will dissect recent solar-plus-storage PPAs with executives from Cypress Creek and Borrego Solar at Energy Storage Summit. Later on, journalist Jeff St. John will lead a debate over whether centralized or distributed storage locations make more sense.

Meanwhile, the residential solar leaders expanded their storage pairings as well.

SolarCity combined with Tesla via a merger. Sunrun pushed ahead with its BrightBox solar-plus-storage package, which now accounts for 10 percent of its direct sales in California. Vivint formed a partnership with Mercedes-Benz Energy to deliver residential batteries, although it's been quiet since.

Storage remains a tiny slice of these installers' business, but that's in large part because few markets have compelling economics for it. By at least getting started, these companies will gain experience before the markets for firmed solar or distributed storage heat up.

Virtual power plants become more of real thing

It's a lot easier to talk about virtual power plants than to build one. This year, though, some real, sizable projects gained steam.

Advanced Microgrid Solutions launched the first phase of its flagship deal with Southern California Edison in November. The first batch included 2 megawatts of capacity, but more will phase in over the year to come. After years of pitching the concept of virtual power plants, the company gets to show the goods.

In October, Sonnen announced a contract to put its batteries into a development of 2,900 high-performance homes in Arizona. Earlier, Sunrun launched a partnership with National Grid to deliver BrightBox systems in New York, with a goal of aggregating the resources for grid services.

And the drumbeat of smaller pilots continued. Austin is building distributed storage and solar across the city. Sunverge announced small utility pilots with APS, Green Mountain Power and Lakeland Electric, but deployed 250 units with Australian utility AGL.

The hype is likely to outshine the reality for some time, but these early projects build evidence that distributed power resources can be valuable to the grid.

Carmakers and countries commit to electric vehicles

China, the world's largest car market, announced in September that it's researching a ban on internal combustion engines. Such a measure could drastically accelerate the speed of uptake for electric vehicles.

California may follow suit. Other markets have already committed: Norway pledged to sell only electric cars by 2025; France targeted 2040; the U.K. soon followed with its own 2040 pledge.

Carmaker Volvo said all its cars would have electric motors starting in 2019 (many of them will still burn gas or diesel as hybrids). General Motors signaled its commitment to a "zero emissions future" with a roster of new electric offerings, although it stayed shy on how long it would take to realize that vision.

All these promises will need to be backed up by action; pledging a major change in 2040 means nothing without concrete intermediate results. Some commenters think EVs will have taken over by then on the strength of market forces alone.

These promises do amount to a widespread endorsement of EVs over the coming years, and that means more battery production. The EV industry's success fuels the manufacturing scale and cost declines that the stationary storage needs for its own growth.

New York still hasn't figured out how to use storage

New York's Reforming the Energy Vision project is reshaping the grid to support cleaner power and more efficient utilization of resources. Storage sounds like a perfect fit for those goals, but almost no capacity has been deployed in the years since REV got started.

The challenges, detailed here, include unfinished storage tariffs, lack of long term contracts for capacity, a fire code that keeps New York City mostly off limits, and utilities that dragged their feet on deployments long enough to get an explicit rebuke from regulators.

The year ended with a bang: five months after the state legislature unanimously passed a bill to create a storage target, Governor Andrew Cuomo decided to sign it into law. That triggers a process of setting an appropriate target and creating government programs to help meet it.

Whether these efforts produce a real market remains to be seen, but the state set itself on track for more storage activity in the coming years.

Storage might beat out a gas peaker plant for the first time

Storage developers have spoken hungrily about their ability to take the place of gas plants for peak power. Now it might actually happen.

NRG's efforts to build the Puente gas plant in Oxnard, California, ran into opposition in the final stages of regulatory approval. A coalition of clean energy advocates, environmental justice advocates and the city itself pushed back against the proposal, saying that a gas plant would be an unnecessary expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure when cleaner alternatives exist.

Those arguments had been heard elsewhere, but this time, the grid operator agreed. CAISO studied the local grid needs and determined storage and other distributed assets could do the job of the gas plant. That just left the question of relative cost, which CAISO said could only really be determined by industry bids in a request for offers.

The regulators reviewing the case announced they planned to reject the plant. Then NRG asked for a suspension of the approval process to allow for the RFO, and the regulators granted it. 

This story is still developing. It's not yet clear just how competitive the storage bids will be compared to the cost of a gas plant, or how much regulators will weigh the value of clean, flexible resources relative to gas burning infrastructure that would only rarely operate.

The gas plant could still win out, but if it doesn't, this will be the first time storage triumphs in a head-to-head peaker contest.

Tesla promises the world's biggest battery in less than 100 days...and delivers

After betting he could deliver the world's largest battery in 100 days or it would be free, Elon Musk followed through. 

The 100 megawatt/129 megawatt-hour facility began testing in South Australia just about when Americans sat down for their Thanksgiving feasts. Much like Aliso Canyon, it showcased the unique speed with which storage can arrive on the grid in response to urgent needs. 

When it comes to the flagship projects, the company delivers in a big way. Back on the home front, though, Tesla has had trouble maintaining timely deliveries of batteries to its typical storage customers. 

As the company matures, it will need to balance rapid response to emergency opportunities with steady and reliable shipments to customers. It's currently ramping up Gigafactory production to that end, while working out kinks in the manufacturing line for the Model 3.

That's an important step, because grid emergencies like South Australia won't stop coming, and Tesla could be called on again for rapid response mega-batteries before too long.  

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8265708 http://ift.tt/2AvPecF via IFTTT

[thephandragon]

The 10 Stories That Defined Energy Storage in 2017

Energy storage proved itself in 2017.

The industry stepped up with two major, high-speed deployments to resolve grid emergencies. Utility-scale projects got bigger and longer lasting. Major international conglomerates bought up storage startups. And all the major solar developers started getting into the game.

Much of the action remained at the pilot stage. But some projects showed that storage economics already make sense without subsidies, grants or other interventions -- in the right circumstances, of course.

GTM will be diving deep on these themes at the Energy Storage Summit in San Francisco December 12-13. In the meantime, here's a roundup of the key developments from 2017.

Storage backs up Southern California grid after record gas leaks

Aliso Canyon just might be the biggest energy storage story ever. 

The details are well known in the industry -- not so much outside of it.

Here's the gist: California suffered the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, resulting in constraints gas for peak power generation around L.A. and San Diego; to meet the shortfall, the state deployed 100 megawatts of storage across several sites in a stunning six months.

The episode showed that storage can respond to capacity constraints far more quickly than traditional power plants, and can slip more easily into populous areas like suburban San Diego and Los Angeles.

That success -- the feared blackouts never materialized over the summer peak season -- puts storage in the toolkit for future grid crises. And it bolsters the case for using distributed batteries to meet local capacity needs, shifting away from reliance on gas plants. 

This could only happen because California had already prioritized storage policy and built out a regulatory understanding of the technology. If other states want the flexibility to respond to surprises as quickly as California did, they need to put in the work now.

Solar-plus-storage contracts drive prices to new lows

The year started with a solar-plus-storage record: AES inked a contract for a Kauai project at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will combine 28 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with 20 megawatts of five-hour duration batteries, producing 11 percent of the island's electricity.

That project managed to outsize an earlier Tesla/SolarCity deal on the island and shave a few cents off the unit price. In May, another project made this one look like an appetizer.

Tucson Electric Power contracted with NextEra Energy Resources to build out a major solar-plus storage project at a 20-year PPA rate below 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will pair 100 megawatts of solar generation with a 30 megawatt/ 120 megawatt-hour storage system. (That's as big as the AES Escondido system, which was the largest of its kind until Tesla outdid it in Australia).

That announcement turned heads and set of a flurry of number crunching, as analysts and rivals tried to unpack how such a low price could be possible. The investment tax credit plays a role, as does NextEra's ability to source equipment at aggressive price points. 

Crucially, this is happening in sunny Arizona, where the abundance of solar generation is creating value for dispatchable power. Storage thrives when its flexibility is compensated, and Arizona's regulated utilities can do just that.

Non-wires alternatives start to pencil out on their own

New York authorized its utilities to make money by avoiding more expensive grid upgrades.

Some of these non-wires alternatives utilize batteries, like the Marcus Garvey Apartments microgrid that went up this spring. That project showed that creative regulatory changes and targeted incentives can encourage innovative projects.

More impressive is the storage project that works without such assistance.

Arizona Public Service pulled off this feat with its Punkin Center project, which utilizes a 2 megawatt/ 8 megawatt-hour battery system from AES to avoid a wires upgrade for a remote desert town.

Load growth there would have required a 20-mile cable upgrade, but APS determined it could fix the issue with a locally-sited battery for less than half the upfront cost. This wasn't driven by a regulatory imperative to re-envision the grid or fight climate change; it simply made economic sense.

Leaders from both companies will discuss the project during a fireside chat at the Energy Storage Summit.

Big energy companies bought their way into storage

Legacy energy companies snapped up storage startups throughout the year.

It started with Demand Energy's acquisition by European utility and renewables developer Enel in January. Then the Finnish engine company Wartsila bought Greensmith in May. Scottish mobile power provider Aggreko picked up Younicos in July for $52 million.

Later on, AES signed a joint venture with Siemens to merge their storage practices under the name Fluence.

This continues a trend from last year, in which Engie took a controlling stake in Green Charge and French energy giant Total picked up Saft in the largest battery acquisition ever.

The impact of these acquisitions hasn't fully materialized yet. Once complete, though, the deals promise to expand the storage industry in meaningful ways.

They give once small companies a major balance sheet to assure customers and financiers they can be trusted with a large contract. They also give storage startups the resources to expand faster than they would otherwise.

Green Charge, Greensmith and Demand Energy have all hinted at international expansion to come, although we haven't seen that materialize just yet. AES explicitly referenced Siemens' sales presence in 160 companies as a motivation for the partnership. That expansion may materialize in the coming year.

It's official: All the biggest solar developers are looking at storage too

Solar-plus-storage has inspired eager chatter for some time now, but this year companies finally started to follow through on the premise.

The top utility-scale solar installers have either developed storage or are actively pursuing it, GTM reported in June. Many of them have begun bidding hybrid projects, which means we could start seeing a bump in deployments in the next two or three years. Installed and operating projects are still rare.

GTM Research analyst Daniel Finn-Foley will dissect recent solar-plus-storage PPAs with executives from Cypress Creek and Borrego Solar at Energy Storage Summit. Later on, journalist Jeff St. John will lead a debate over whether centralized or distributed storage locations make more sense.

Meanwhile, the residential solar leaders expanded their storage pairings as well.

SolarCity combined with Tesla via a merger. Sunrun pushed ahead with its BrightBox solar-plus-storage package, which now accounts for 10 percent of its direct sales in California. Vivint formed a partnership with Mercedes-Benz Energy to deliver residential batteries, although it's been quiet since.

Storage remains a tiny slice of these installers' business, but that's in large part because few markets have compelling economics for it. By at least getting started, these companies will gain experience before the markets for firmed solar or distributed storage heat up.

Virtual power plants become more of real thing

It's a lot easier to talk about virtual power plants than to build one. This year, though, some real, sizable projects gained steam.

Advanced Microgrid Solutions launched the first phase of its flagship deal with Southern California Edison in November. The first batch included 2 megawatts of capacity, but more will phase in over the year to come. After years of pitching the concept of virtual power plants, the company gets to show the goods.

In October, Sonnen announced a contract to put its batteries into a development of 2,900 high-performance homes in Arizona. Earlier, Sunrun launched a partnership with National Grid to deliver BrightBox systems in New York, with a goal of aggregating the resources for grid services.

And the drumbeat of smaller pilots continued. Austin is building distributed storage and solar across the city. Sunverge announced small utility pilots with APS, Green Mountain Power and Lakeland Electric, but deployed 250 units with Australian utility AGL.

The hype is likely to outshine the reality for some time, but these early projects build evidence that distributed power resources can be valuable to the grid.

Carmakers and countries commit to electric vehicles

China, the world's largest car market, announced in September that it's researching a ban on internal combustion engines. Such a measure could drastically accelerate the speed of uptake for electric vehicles.

California may follow suit. Other markets have already committed: Norway pledged to sell only electric cars by 2025; France targeted 2040; the U.K. soon followed with its own 2040 pledge.

Carmaker Volvo said all its cars would have electric motors starting in 2019 (many of them will still burn gas or diesel as hybrids). General Motors signaled its commitment to a "zero emissions future" with a roster of new electric offerings, although it stayed shy on how long it would take to realize that vision.

All these promises will need to be backed up by action; pledging a major change in 2040 means nothing without concrete intermediate results. Some commenters think EVs will have taken over by then on the strength of market forces alone.

These promises do amount to a widespread endorsement of EVs over the coming years, and that means more battery production. The EV industry's success fuels the manufacturing scale and cost declines that the stationary storage needs for its own growth.

New York still hasn't figured out how to use storage

New York's Reforming the Energy Vision project is reshaping the grid to support cleaner power and more efficient utilization of resources. Storage sounds like a perfect fit for those goals, but almost no capacity has been deployed in the years since REV got started.

The challenges, detailed here, include unfinished storage tariffs, lack of long term contracts for capacity, a fire code that keeps New York City mostly off limits, and utilities that dragged their feet on deployments long enough to get an explicit rebuke from regulators.

The year ended with a bang: five months after the state legislature unanimously passed a bill to create a storage target, Governor Andrew Cuomo decided to sign it into law. That triggers a process of setting an appropriate target and creating government programs to help meet it.

Whether these efforts produce a real market remains to be seen, but the state set itself on track for more storage activity in the coming years.

Storage might beat out a gas peaker plant for the first time

Storage developers have spoken hungrily about their ability to take the place of gas plants for peak power. Now it might actually happen.

NRG's efforts to build the Puente gas plant in Oxnard, California, ran into opposition in the final stages of regulatory approval. A coalition of clean energy advocates, environmental justice advocates and the city itself pushed back against the proposal, saying that a gas plant would be an unnecessary expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure when cleaner alternatives exist.

Those arguments had been heard elsewhere, but this time, the grid operator agreed. CAISO studied the local grid needs and determined storage and other distributed assets could do the job of the gas plant. That just left the question of relative cost, which CAISO said could only really be determined by industry bids in a request for offers.

The regulators reviewing the case announced they planned to reject the plant. Then NRG asked for a suspension of the approval process to allow for the RFO, and the regulators granted it. 

This story is still developing. It's not yet clear just how competitive the storage bids will be compared to the cost of a gas plant, or how much regulators will weigh the value of clean, flexible resources relative to gas burning infrastructure that would only rarely operate.

The gas plant could still win out, but if it doesn't, this will be the first time storage triumphs in a head-to-head peaker contest.

Tesla promises the world's biggest battery in less than 100 days...and delivers

After betting he could deliver the world's largest battery in 100 days or it would be free, Elon Musk followed through. 

The 100 megawatt/129 megawatt-hour facility began testing in South Australia just about when Americans sat down for their Thanksgiving feasts. Much like Aliso Canyon, it showcased the unique speed with which storage can arrive on the grid in response to urgent needs. 

When it comes to the flagship projects, the company delivers in a big way. Back on the home front, though, Tesla has had trouble maintaining timely deliveries of batteries to its typical storage customers. 

As the company matures, it will need to balance rapid response to emergency opportunities with steady and reliable shipments to customers. It's currently ramping up Gigafactory production to that end, while working out kinks in the manufacturing line for the Model 3.

That's an important step, because grid emergencies like South Australia won't stop coming, and Tesla could be called on again for rapid response mega-batteries before too long.  

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8265708 http://ift.tt/2AvPecF via IFTTT

[kiimmmchhi]

The 10 Stories That Defined Energy Storage in 2017

Energy storage proved itself in 2017.

The industry stepped up with two major, high-speed deployments to resolve grid emergencies. Utility-scale projects got bigger and longer lasting. Major international conglomerates bought up storage startups. And all the major solar developers started getting into the game.

Much of the action remained at the pilot stage. But some projects showed that storage economics already make sense without subsidies, grants or other interventions -- in the right circumstances, of course.

GTM will be diving deep on these themes at the Energy Storage Summit in San Francisco December 12-13. In the meantime, here's a roundup of the key developments from 2017.

Storage backs up Southern California grid after record gas leaks

Aliso Canyon just might be the biggest energy storage story ever. 

The details are well known in the industry -- not so much outside of it.

Here's the gist: California suffered the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, resulting in constraints gas for peak power generation around L.A. and San Diego; to meet the shortfall, the state deployed 100 megawatts of storage across several sites in a stunning six months.

The episode showed that storage can respond to capacity constraints far more quickly than traditional power plants, and can slip more easily into populous areas like suburban San Diego and Los Angeles.

That success -- the feared blackouts never materialized over the summer peak season -- puts storage in the toolkit for future grid crises. And it bolsters the case for using distributed batteries to meet local capacity needs, shifting away from reliance on gas plants. 

This could only happen because California had already prioritized storage policy and built out a regulatory understanding of the technology. If other states want the flexibility to respond to surprises as quickly as California did, they need to put in the work now.

Solar-plus-storage contracts drive prices to new lows

The year started with a solar-plus-storage record: AES inked a contract for a Kauai project at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will combine 28 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with 20 megawatts of five-hour duration batteries, producing 11 percent of the island's electricity.

That project managed to outsize an earlier Tesla/SolarCity deal on the island and shave a few cents off the unit price. In May, another project made this one look like an appetizer.

Tucson Electric Power contracted with NextEra Energy Resources to build out a major solar-plus storage project at a 20-year PPA rate below 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will pair 100 megawatts of solar generation with a 30 megawatt/ 120 megawatt-hour storage system. (That's as big as the AES Escondido system, which was the largest of its kind until Tesla outdid it in Australia).

That announcement turned heads and set of a flurry of number crunching, as analysts and rivals tried to unpack how such a low price could be possible. The investment tax credit plays a role, as does NextEra's ability to source equipment at aggressive price points. 

Crucially, this is happening in sunny Arizona, where the abundance of solar generation is creating value for dispatchable power. Storage thrives when its flexibility is compensated, and Arizona's regulated utilities can do just that.

Non-wires alternatives start to pencil out on their own

New York authorized its utilities to make money by avoiding more expensive grid upgrades.

Some of these non-wires alternatives utilize batteries, like the Marcus Garvey Apartments microgrid that went up this spring. That project showed that creative regulatory changes and targeted incentives can encourage innovative projects.

More impressive is the storage project that works without such assistance.

Arizona Public Service pulled off this feat with its Punkin Center project, which utilizes a 2 megawatt/ 8 megawatt-hour battery system from AES to avoid a wires upgrade for a remote desert town.

Load growth there would have required a 20-mile cable upgrade, but APS determined it could fix the issue with a locally-sited battery for less than half the upfront cost. This wasn't driven by a regulatory imperative to re-envision the grid or fight climate change; it simply made economic sense.

Leaders from both companies will discuss the project during a fireside chat at the Energy Storage Summit.

Big energy companies bought their way into storage

Legacy energy companies snapped up storage startups throughout the year.

It started with Demand Energy's acquisition by European utility and renewables developer Enel in January. Then the Finnish engine company Wartsila bought Greensmith in May. Scottish mobile power provider Aggreko picked up Younicos in July for $52 million.

Later on, AES signed a joint venture with Siemens to merge their storage practices under the name Fluence.

This continues a trend from last year, in which Engie took a controlling stake in Green Charge and French energy giant Total picked up Saft in the largest battery acquisition ever.

The impact of these acquisitions hasn't fully materialized yet. Once complete, though, the deals promise to expand the storage industry in meaningful ways.

They give once small companies a major balance sheet to assure customers and financiers they can be trusted with a large contract. They also give storage startups the resources to expand faster than they would otherwise.

Green Charge, Greensmith and Demand Energy have all hinted at international expansion to come, although we haven't seen that materialize just yet. AES explicitly referenced Siemens' sales presence in 160 companies as a motivation for the partnership. That expansion may materialize in the coming year.

It's official: All the biggest solar developers are looking at storage too

Solar-plus-storage has inspired eager chatter for some time now, but this year companies finally started to follow through on the premise.

The top utility-scale solar installers have either developed storage or are actively pursuing it, GTM reported in June. Many of them have begun bidding hybrid projects, which means we could start seeing a bump in deployments in the next two or three years. Installed and operating projects are still rare.

GTM Research analyst Daniel Finn-Foley will dissect recent solar-plus-storage PPAs with executives from Cypress Creek and Borrego Solar at Energy Storage Summit. Later on, journalist Jeff St. John will lead a debate over whether centralized or distributed storage locations make more sense.

Meanwhile, the residential solar leaders expanded their storage pairings as well.

SolarCity combined with Tesla via a merger. Sunrun pushed ahead with its BrightBox solar-plus-storage package, which now accounts for 10 percent of its direct sales in California. Vivint formed a partnership with Mercedes-Benz Energy to deliver residential batteries, although it's been quiet since.

Storage remains a tiny slice of these installers' business, but that's in large part because few markets have compelling economics for it. By at least getting started, these companies will gain experience before the markets for firmed solar or distributed storage heat up.

Virtual power plants become more of real thing

It's a lot easier to talk about virtual power plants than to build one. This year, though, some real, sizable projects gained steam.

Advanced Microgrid Solutions launched the first phase of its flagship deal with Southern California Edison in November. The first batch included 2 megawatts of capacity, but more will phase in over the year to come. After years of pitching the concept of virtual power plants, the company gets to show the goods.

In October, Sonnen announced a contract to put its batteries into a development of 2,900 high-performance homes in Arizona. Earlier, Sunrun launched a partnership with National Grid to deliver BrightBox systems in New York, with a goal of aggregating the resources for grid services.

And the drumbeat of smaller pilots continued. Austin is building distributed storage and solar across the city. Sunverge announced small utility pilots with APS, Green Mountain Power and Lakeland Electric, but deployed 250 units with Australian utility AGL.

The hype is likely to outshine the reality for some time, but these early projects build evidence that distributed power resources can be valuable to the grid.

Carmakers and countries commit to electric vehicles

China, the world's largest car market, announced in September that it's researching a ban on internal combustion engines. Such a measure could drastically accelerate the speed of uptake for electric vehicles.

California may follow suit. Other markets have already committed: Norway pledged to sell only electric cars by 2025; France targeted 2040; the U.K. soon followed with its own 2040 pledge.

Carmaker Volvo said all its cars would have electric motors starting in 2019 (many of them will still burn gas or diesel as hybrids). General Motors signaled its commitment to a "zero emissions future" with a roster of new electric offerings, although it stayed shy on how long it would take to realize that vision.

All these promises will need to be backed up by action; pledging a major change in 2040 means nothing without concrete intermediate results. Some commenters think EVs will have taken over by then on the strength of market forces alone.

These promises do amount to a widespread endorsement of EVs over the coming years, and that means more battery production. The EV industry's success fuels the manufacturing scale and cost declines that the stationary storage needs for its own growth.

New York still hasn't figured out how to use storage

New York's Reforming the Energy Vision project is reshaping the grid to support cleaner power and more efficient utilization of resources. Storage sounds like a perfect fit for those goals, but almost no capacity has been deployed in the years since REV got started.

The challenges, detailed here, include unfinished storage tariffs, lack of long term contracts for capacity, a fire code that keeps New York City mostly off limits, and utilities that dragged their feet on deployments long enough to get an explicit rebuke from regulators.

The year ended with a bang: five months after the state legislature unanimously passed a bill to create a storage target, Governor Andrew Cuomo decided to sign it into law. That triggers a process of setting an appropriate target and creating government programs to help meet it.

Whether these efforts produce a real market remains to be seen, but the state set itself on track for more storage activity in the coming years.

Storage might beat out a gas peaker plant for the first time

Storage developers have spoken hungrily about their ability to take the place of gas plants for peak power. Now it might actually happen.

NRG's efforts to build the Puente gas plant in Oxnard, California, ran into opposition in the final stages of regulatory approval. A coalition of clean energy advocates, environmental justice advocates and the city itself pushed back against the proposal, saying that a gas plant would be an unnecessary expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure when cleaner alternatives exist.

Those arguments had been heard elsewhere, but this time, the grid operator agreed. CAISO studied the local grid needs and determined storage and other distributed assets could do the job of the gas plant. That just left the question of relative cost, which CAISO said could only really be determined by industry bids in a request for offers.

The regulators reviewing the case announced they planned to reject the plant. Then NRG asked for a suspension of the approval process to allow for the RFO, and the regulators granted it. 

This story is still developing. It's not yet clear just how competitive the storage bids will be compared to the cost of a gas plant, or how much regulators will weigh the value of clean, flexible resources relative to gas burning infrastructure that would only rarely operate.

The gas plant could still win out, but if it doesn't, this will be the first time storage triumphs in a head-to-head peaker contest.

Tesla promises the world's biggest battery in less than 100 days...and delivers

After betting he could deliver the world's largest battery in 100 days or it would be free, Elon Musk followed through. 

The 100 megawatt/129 megawatt-hour facility began testing in South Australia just about when Americans sat down for their Thanksgiving feasts. Much like Aliso Canyon, it showcased the unique speed with which storage can arrive on the grid in response to urgent needs. 

When it comes to the flagship projects, the company delivers in a big way. Back on the home front, though, Tesla has had trouble maintaining timely deliveries of batteries to its typical storage customers. 

As the company matures, it will need to balance rapid response to emergency opportunities with steady and reliable shipments to customers. It's currently ramping up Gigafactory production to that end, while working out kinks in the manufacturing line for the Model 3.

That's an important step, because grid emergencies like South Australia won't stop coming, and Tesla could be called on again for rapid response mega-batteries before too long.  

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8265708 http://ift.tt/2AvPecF via IFTTT

[kimberlydenis]

The 10 Stories That Defined Energy Storage in 2017

Energy storage proved itself in 2017.

The industry stepped up with two major, high-speed deployments to resolve grid emergencies. Utility-scale projects got bigger and longer lasting. Major international conglomerates bought up storage startups. And all the major solar developers started getting into the game.

Much of the action remained at the pilot stage. But some projects showed that storage economics already make sense without subsidies, grants or other interventions -- in the right circumstances, of course.

GTM will be diving deep on these themes at the Energy Storage Summit in San Francisco December 12-13. In the meantime, here's a roundup of the key developments from 2017.

Storage backs up Southern California grid after record gas leaks

Aliso Canyon just might be the biggest energy storage story ever. 

The details are well known in the industry -- not so much outside of it.

Here's the gist: California suffered the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, resulting in constraints gas for peak power generation around L.A. and San Diego; to meet the shortfall, the state deployed 100 megawatts of storage across several sites in a stunning six months.

The episode showed that storage can respond to capacity constraints far more quickly than traditional power plants, and can slip more easily into populous areas like suburban San Diego and Los Angeles.

That success -- the feared blackouts never materialized over the summer peak season -- puts storage in the toolkit for future grid crises. And it bolsters the case for using distributed batteries to meet local capacity needs, shifting away from reliance on gas plants. 

This could only happen because California had already prioritized storage policy and built out a regulatory understanding of the technology. If other states want the flexibility to respond to surprises as quickly as California did, they need to put in the work now.

Solar-plus-storage contracts drive prices to new lows

The year started with a solar-plus-storage record: AES inked a contract for a Kauai project at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will combine 28 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with 20 megawatts of five-hour duration batteries, producing 11 percent of the island's electricity.

That project managed to outsize an earlier Tesla/SolarCity deal on the island and shave a few cents off the unit price. In May, another project made this one look like an appetizer.

Tucson Electric Power contracted with NextEra Energy Resources to build out a major solar-plus storage project at a 20-year PPA rate below 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will pair 100 megawatts of solar generation with a 30 megawatt/ 120 megawatt-hour storage system. (That's as big as the AES Escondido system, which was the largest of its kind until Tesla outdid it in Australia).

That announcement turned heads and set of a flurry of number crunching, as analysts and rivals tried to unpack how such a low price could be possible. The investment tax credit plays a role, as does NextEra's ability to source equipment at aggressive price points. 

Crucially, this is happening in sunny Arizona, where the abundance of solar generation is creating value for dispatchable power. Storage thrives when its flexibility is compensated, and Arizona's regulated utilities can do just that.

Non-wires alternatives start to pencil out on their own

New York authorized its utilities to make money by avoiding more expensive grid upgrades.

Some of these non-wires alternatives utilize batteries, like the Marcus Garvey Apartments microgrid that went up this spring. That project showed that creative regulatory changes and targeted incentives can encourage innovative projects.

More impressive is the storage project that works without such assistance.

Arizona Public Service pulled off this feat with its Punkin Center project, which utilizes a 2 megawatt/ 8 megawatt-hour battery system from AES to avoid a wires upgrade for a remote desert town.

Load growth there would have required a 20-mile cable upgrade, but APS determined it could fix the issue with a locally-sited battery for less than half the upfront cost. This wasn't driven by a regulatory imperative to re-envision the grid or fight climate change; it simply made economic sense.

Leaders from both companies will discuss the project during a fireside chat at the Energy Storage Summit.

Big energy companies bought their way into storage

Legacy energy companies snapped up storage startups throughout the year.

It started with Demand Energy's acquisition by European utility and renewables developer Enel in January. Then the Finnish engine company Wartsila bought Greensmith in May. Scottish mobile power provider Aggreko picked up Younicos in July for $52 million.

Later on, AES signed a joint venture with Siemens to merge their storage practices under the name Fluence.

This continues a trend from last year, in which Engie took a controlling stake in Green Charge and French energy giant Total picked up Saft in the largest battery acquisition ever.

The impact of these acquisitions hasn't fully materialized yet. Once complete, though, the deals promise to expand the storage industry in meaningful ways.

They give once small companies a major balance sheet to assure customers and financiers they can be trusted with a large contract. They also give storage startups the resources to expand faster than they would otherwise.

Green Charge, Greensmith and Demand Energy have all hinted at international expansion to come, although we haven't seen that materialize just yet. AES explicitly referenced Siemens' sales presence in 160 companies as a motivation for the partnership. That expansion may materialize in the coming year.

It's official: All the biggest solar developers are looking at storage too

Solar-plus-storage has inspired eager chatter for some time now, but this year companies finally started to follow through on the premise.

The top utility-scale solar installers have either developed storage or are actively pursuing it, GTM reported in June. Many of them have begun bidding hybrid projects, which means we could start seeing a bump in deployments in the next two or three years. Installed and operating projects are still rare.

GTM Research analyst Daniel Finn-Foley will dissect recent solar-plus-storage PPAs with executives from Cypress Creek and Borrego Solar at Energy Storage Summit. Later on, journalist Jeff St. John will lead a debate over whether centralized or distributed storage locations make more sense.

Meanwhile, the residential solar leaders expanded their storage pairings as well.

SolarCity combined with Tesla via a merger. Sunrun pushed ahead with its BrightBox solar-plus-storage package, which now accounts for 10 percent of its direct sales in California. Vivint formed a partnership with Mercedes-Benz Energy to deliver residential batteries, although it's been quiet since.

Storage remains a tiny slice of these installers' business, but that's in large part because few markets have compelling economics for it. By at least getting started, these companies will gain experience before the markets for firmed solar or distributed storage heat up.

Virtual power plants become more of real thing

It's a lot easier to talk about virtual power plants than to build one. This year, though, some real, sizable projects gained steam.

Advanced Microgrid Solutions launched the first phase of its flagship deal with Southern California Edison in November. The first batch included 2 megawatts of capacity, but more will phase in over the year to come. After years of pitching the concept of virtual power plants, the company gets to show the goods.

In October, Sonnen announced a contract to put its batteries into a development of 2,900 high-performance homes in Arizona. Earlier, Sunrun launched a partnership with National Grid to deliver BrightBox systems in New York, with a goal of aggregating the resources for grid services.

And the drumbeat of smaller pilots continued. Austin is building distributed storage and solar across the city. Sunverge announced small utility pilots with APS, Green Mountain Power and Lakeland Electric, but deployed 250 units with Australian utility AGL.

The hype is likely to outshine the reality for some time, but these early projects build evidence that distributed power resources can be valuable to the grid.

Carmakers and countries commit to electric vehicles

China, the world's largest car market, announced in September that it's researching a ban on internal combustion engines. Such a measure could drastically accelerate the speed of uptake for electric vehicles.

California may follow suit. Other markets have already committed: Norway pledged to sell only electric cars by 2025; France targeted 2040; the U.K. soon followed with its own 2040 pledge.

Carmaker Volvo said all its cars would have electric motors starting in 2019 (many of them will still burn gas or diesel as hybrids). General Motors signaled its commitment to a "zero emissions future" with a roster of new electric offerings, although it stayed shy on how long it would take to realize that vision.

All these promises will need to be backed up by action; pledging a major change in 2040 means nothing without concrete intermediate results. Some commenters think EVs will have taken over by then on the strength of market forces alone.

These promises do amount to a widespread endorsement of EVs over the coming years, and that means more battery production. The EV industry's success fuels the manufacturing scale and cost declines that the stationary storage needs for its own growth.

New York still hasn't figured out how to use storage

New York's Reforming the Energy Vision project is reshaping the grid to support cleaner power and more efficient utilization of resources. Storage sounds like a perfect fit for those goals, but almost no capacity has been deployed in the years since REV got started.

The challenges, detailed here, include unfinished storage tariffs, lack of long term contracts for capacity, a fire code that keeps New York City mostly off limits, and utilities that dragged their feet on deployments long enough to get an explicit rebuke from regulators.

The year ended with a bang: five months after the state legislature unanimously passed a bill to create a storage target, Governor Andrew Cuomo decided to sign it into law. That triggers a process of setting an appropriate target and creating government programs to help meet it.

Whether these efforts produce a real market remains to be seen, but the state set itself on track for more storage activity in the coming years.

Storage might beat out a gas peaker plant for the first time

Storage developers have spoken hungrily about their ability to take the place of gas plants for peak power. Now it might actually happen.

NRG's efforts to build the Puente gas plant in Oxnard, California, ran into opposition in the final stages of regulatory approval. A coalition of clean energy advocates, environmental justice advocates and the city itself pushed back against the proposal, saying that a gas plant would be an unnecessary expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure when cleaner alternatives exist.

Those arguments had been heard elsewhere, but this time, the grid operator agreed. CAISO studied the local grid needs and determined storage and other distributed assets could do the job of the gas plant. That just left the question of relative cost, which CAISO said could only really be determined by industry bids in a request for offers.

The regulators reviewing the case announced they planned to reject the plant. Then NRG asked for a suspension of the approval process to allow for the RFO, and the regulators granted it. 

This story is still developing. It's not yet clear just how competitive the storage bids will be compared to the cost of a gas plant, or how much regulators will weigh the value of clean, flexible resources relative to gas burning infrastructure that would only rarely operate.

The gas plant could still win out, but if it doesn't, this will be the first time storage triumphs in a head-to-head peaker contest.

Tesla promises the world's biggest battery in less than 100 days...and delivers

After betting he could deliver the world's largest battery in 100 days or it would be free, Elon Musk followed through. 

The 100 megawatt/129 megawatt-hour facility began testing in South Australia just about when Americans sat down for their Thanksgiving feasts. Much like Aliso Canyon, it showcased the unique speed with which storage can arrive on the grid in response to urgent needs. 

When it comes to the flagship projects, the company delivers in a big way. Back on the home front, though, Tesla has had trouble maintaining timely deliveries of batteries to its typical storage customers. 

As the company matures, it will need to balance rapid response to emergency opportunities with steady and reliable shipments to customers. It's currently ramping up Gigafactory production to that end, while working out kinks in the manufacturing line for the Model 3.

That's an important step, because grid emergencies like South Australia won't stop coming, and Tesla could be called on again for rapid response mega-batteries before too long.  

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8265708 http://ift.tt/2AvPecF via IFTTT

[markssailingthecrisscolfership]

The 10 Stories That Defined Energy Storage in 2017

Energy storage proved itself in 2017.

The industry stepped up with two major, high-speed deployments to resolve grid emergencies. Utility-scale projects got bigger and longer lasting. Major international conglomerates bought up storage startups. And all the major solar developers started getting into the game.

Much of the action remained at the pilot stage. But some projects showed that storage economics already make sense without subsidies, grants or other interventions -- in the right circumstances, of course.

GTM will be diving deep on these themes at the Energy Storage Summit in San Francisco December 12-13. In the meantime, here's a roundup of the key developments from 2017.

Storage backs up Southern California grid after record gas leaks

Aliso Canyon just might be the biggest energy storage story ever. 

The details are well known in the industry -- not so much outside of it.

Here's the gist: California suffered the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, resulting in constraints gas for peak power generation around L.A. and San Diego; to meet the shortfall, the state deployed 100 megawatts of storage across several sites in a stunning six months.

The episode showed that storage can respond to capacity constraints far more quickly than traditional power plants, and can slip more easily into populous areas like suburban San Diego and Los Angeles.

That success -- the feared blackouts never materialized over the summer peak season -- puts storage in the toolkit for future grid crises. And it bolsters the case for using distributed batteries to meet local capacity needs, shifting away from reliance on gas plants. 

This could only happen because California had already prioritized storage policy and built out a regulatory understanding of the technology. If other states want the flexibility to respond to surprises as quickly as California did, they need to put in the work now.

Solar-plus-storage contracts drive prices to new lows

The year started with a solar-plus-storage record: AES inked a contract for a Kauai project at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will combine 28 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with 20 megawatts of five-hour duration batteries, producing 11 percent of the island's electricity.

That project managed to outsize an earlier Tesla/SolarCity deal on the island and shave a few cents off the unit price. In May, another project made this one look like an appetizer.

Tucson Electric Power contracted with NextEra Energy Resources to build out a major solar-plus storage project at a 20-year PPA rate below 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will pair 100 megawatts of solar generation with a 30 megawatt/ 120 megawatt-hour storage system. (That's as big as the AES Escondido system, which was the largest of its kind until Tesla outdid it in Australia).

That announcement turned heads and set of a flurry of number crunching, as analysts and rivals tried to unpack how such a low price could be possible. The investment tax credit plays a role, as does NextEra's ability to source equipment at aggressive price points. 

Crucially, this is happening in sunny Arizona, where the abundance of solar generation is creating value for dispatchable power. Storage thrives when its flexibility is compensated, and Arizona's regulated utilities can do just that.

Non-wires alternatives start to pencil out on their own

New York authorized its utilities to make money by avoiding more expensive grid upgrades.

Some of these non-wires alternatives utilize batteries, like the Marcus Garvey Apartments microgrid that went up this spring. That project showed that creative regulatory changes and targeted incentives can encourage innovative projects.

More impressive is the storage project that works without such assistance.

Arizona Public Service pulled off this feat with its Punkin Center project, which utilizes a 2 megawatt/ 8 megawatt-hour battery system from AES to avoid a wires upgrade for a remote desert town.

Load growth there would have required a 20-mile cable upgrade, but APS determined it could fix the issue with a locally-sited battery for less than half the upfront cost. This wasn't driven by a regulatory imperative to re-envision the grid or fight climate change; it simply made economic sense.

Leaders from both companies will discuss the project during a fireside chat at the Energy Storage Summit.

Big energy companies bought their way into storage

Legacy energy companies snapped up storage startups throughout the year.

It started with Demand Energy's acquisition by European utility and renewables developer Enel in January. Then the Finnish engine company Wartsila bought Greensmith in May. Scottish mobile power provider Aggreko picked up Younicos in July for $52 million.

Later on, AES signed a joint venture with Siemens to merge their storage practices under the name Fluence.

This continues a trend from last year, in which Engie took a controlling stake in Green Charge and French energy giant Total picked up Saft in the largest battery acquisition ever.

The impact of these acquisitions hasn't fully materialized yet. Once complete, though, the deals promise to expand the storage industry in meaningful ways.

They give once small companies a major balance sheet to assure customers and financiers they can be trusted with a large contract. They also give storage startups the resources to expand faster than they would otherwise.

Green Charge, Greensmith and Demand Energy have all hinted at international expansion to come, although we haven't seen that materialize just yet. AES explicitly referenced Siemens' sales presence in 160 companies as a motivation for the partnership. That expansion may materialize in the coming year.

It's official: All the biggest solar developers are looking at storage too

Solar-plus-storage has inspired eager chatter for some time now, but this year companies finally started to follow through on the premise.

The top utility-scale solar installers have either developed storage or are actively pursuing it, GTM reported in June. Many of them have begun bidding hybrid projects, which means we could start seeing a bump in deployments in the next two or three years. Installed and operating projects are still rare.

GTM Research analyst Daniel Finn-Foley will dissect recent solar-plus-storage PPAs with executives from Cypress Creek and Borrego Solar at Energy Storage Summit. Later on, journalist Jeff St. John will lead a debate over whether centralized or distributed storage locations make more sense.

Meanwhile, the residential solar leaders expanded their storage pairings as well.

SolarCity combined with Tesla via a merger. Sunrun pushed ahead with its BrightBox solar-plus-storage package, which now accounts for 10 percent of its direct sales in California. Vivint formed a partnership with Mercedes-Benz Energy to deliver residential batteries, although it's been quiet since.

Storage remains a tiny slice of these installers' business, but that's in large part because few markets have compelling economics for it. By at least getting started, these companies will gain experience before the markets for firmed solar or distributed storage heat up.

Virtual power plants become more of real thing

It's a lot easier to talk about virtual power plants than to build one. This year, though, some real, sizable projects gained steam.

Advanced Microgrid Solutions launched the first phase of its flagship deal with Southern California Edison in November. The first batch included 2 megawatts of capacity, but more will phase in over the year to come. After years of pitching the concept of virtual power plants, the company gets to show the goods.

In October, Sonnen announced a contract to put its batteries into a development of 2,900 high-performance homes in Arizona. Earlier, Sunrun launched a partnership with National Grid to deliver BrightBox systems in New York, with a goal of aggregating the resources for grid services.

And the drumbeat of smaller pilots continued. Austin is building distributed storage and solar across the city. Sunverge announced small utility pilots with APS, Green Mountain Power and Lakeland Electric, but deployed 250 units with Australian utility AGL.

The hype is likely to outshine the reality for some time, but these early projects build evidence that distributed power resources can be valuable to the grid.

Carmakers and countries commit to electric vehicles

China, the world's largest car market, announced in September that it's researching a ban on internal combustion engines. Such a measure could drastically accelerate the speed of uptake for electric vehicles.

California may follow suit. Other markets have already committed: Norway pledged to sell only electric cars by 2025; France targeted 2040; the U.K. soon followed with its own 2040 pledge.

Carmaker Volvo said all its cars would have electric motors starting in 2019 (many of them will still burn gas or diesel as hybrids). General Motors signaled its commitment to a "zero emissions future" with a roster of new electric offerings, although it stayed shy on how long it would take to realize that vision.

All these promises will need to be backed up by action; pledging a major change in 2040 means nothing without concrete intermediate results. Some commenters think EVs will have taken over by then on the strength of market forces alone.

These promises do amount to a widespread endorsement of EVs over the coming years, and that means more battery production. The EV industry's success fuels the manufacturing scale and cost declines that the stationary storage needs for its own growth.

New York still hasn't figured out how to use storage

New York's Reforming the Energy Vision project is reshaping the grid to support cleaner power and more efficient utilization of resources. Storage sounds like a perfect fit for those goals, but almost no capacity has been deployed in the years since REV got started.

The challenges, detailed here, include unfinished storage tariffs, lack of long term contracts for capacity, a fire code that keeps New York City mostly off limits, and utilities that dragged their feet on deployments long enough to get an explicit rebuke from regulators.

The year ended with a bang: five months after the state legislature unanimously passed a bill to create a storage target, Governor Andrew Cuomo decided to sign it into law. That triggers a process of setting an appropriate target and creating government programs to help meet it.

Whether these efforts produce a real market remains to be seen, but the state set itself on track for more storage activity in the coming years.

Storage might beat out a gas peaker plant for the first time

Storage developers have spoken hungrily about their ability to take the place of gas plants for peak power. Now it might actually happen.

NRG's efforts to build the Puente gas plant in Oxnard, California, ran into opposition in the final stages of regulatory approval. A coalition of clean energy advocates, environmental justice advocates and the city itself pushed back against the proposal, saying that a gas plant would be an unnecessary expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure when cleaner alternatives exist.

Those arguments had been heard elsewhere, but this time, the grid operator agreed. CAISO studied the local grid needs and determined storage and other distributed assets could do the job of the gas plant. That just left the question of relative cost, which CAISO said could only really be determined by industry bids in a request for offers.

The regulators reviewing the case announced they planned to reject the plant. Then NRG asked for a suspension of the approval process to allow for the RFO, and the regulators granted it. 

This story is still developing. It's not yet clear just how competitive the storage bids will be compared to the cost of a gas plant, or how much regulators will weigh the value of clean, flexible resources relative to gas burning infrastructure that would only rarely operate.

The gas plant could still win out, but if it doesn't, this will be the first time storage triumphs in a head-to-head peaker contest.

Tesla promises the world's biggest battery in less than 100 days...and delivers

After betting he could deliver the world's largest battery in 100 days or it would be free, Elon Musk followed through. 

The 100 megawatt/129 megawatt-hour facility began testing in South Australia just about when Americans sat down for their Thanksgiving feasts. Much like Aliso Canyon, it showcased the unique speed with which storage can arrive on the grid in response to urgent needs. 

When it comes to the flagship projects, the company delivers in a big way. Back on the home front, though, Tesla has had trouble maintaining timely deliveries of batteries to its typical storage customers. 

As the company matures, it will need to balance rapid response to emergency opportunities with steady and reliable shipments to customers. It's currently ramping up Gigafactory production to that end, while working out kinks in the manufacturing line for the Model 3.

That's an important step, because grid emergencies like South Australia won't stop coming, and Tesla could be called on again for rapid response mega-batteries before too long.  

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[nerdydisneynerd]

The 10 Stories That Defined Energy Storage in 2017

Energy storage proved itself in 2017.

The industry stepped up with two major, high-speed deployments to resolve grid emergencies. Utility-scale projects got bigger and longer lasting. Major international conglomerates bought up storage startups. And all the major solar developers started getting into the game.

Much of the action remained at the pilot stage. But some projects showed that storage economics already make sense without subsidies, grants or other interventions -- in the right circumstances, of course.

GTM will be diving deep on these themes at the Energy Storage Summit in San Francisco December 12-13. In the meantime, here's a roundup of the key developments from 2017.

Storage backs up Southern California grid after record gas leaks

Aliso Canyon just might be the biggest energy storage story ever. 

The details are well known in the industry -- not so much outside of it.

Here's the gist: California suffered the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, resulting in constraints gas for peak power generation around L.A. and San Diego; to meet the shortfall, the state deployed 100 megawatts of storage across several sites in a stunning six months.

The episode showed that storage can respond to capacity constraints far more quickly than traditional power plants, and can slip more easily into populous areas like suburban San Diego and Los Angeles.

That success -- the feared blackouts never materialized over the summer peak season -- puts storage in the toolkit for future grid crises. And it bolsters the case for using distributed batteries to meet local capacity needs, shifting away from reliance on gas plants. 

This could only happen because California had already prioritized storage policy and built out a regulatory understanding of the technology. If other states want the flexibility to respond to surprises as quickly as California did, they need to put in the work now.

Solar-plus-storage contracts drive prices to new lows

The year started with a solar-plus-storage record: AES inked a contract for a Kauai project at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will combine 28 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with 20 megawatts of five-hour duration batteries, producing 11 percent of the island's electricity.

That project managed to outsize an earlier Tesla/SolarCity deal on the island and shave a few cents off the unit price. In May, another project made this one look like an appetizer.

Tucson Electric Power contracted with NextEra Energy Resources to build out a major solar-plus storage project at a 20-year PPA rate below 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will pair 100 megawatts of solar generation with a 30 megawatt/ 120 megawatt-hour storage system. (That's as big as the AES Escondido system, which was the largest of its kind until Tesla outdid it in Australia).

That announcement turned heads and set of a flurry of number crunching, as analysts and rivals tried to unpack how such a low price could be possible. The investment tax credit plays a role, as does NextEra's ability to source equipment at aggressive price points. 

Crucially, this is happening in sunny Arizona, where the abundance of solar generation is creating value for dispatchable power. Storage thrives when its flexibility is compensated, and Arizona's regulated utilities can do just that.

Non-wires alternatives start to pencil out on their own

New York authorized its utilities to make money by avoiding more expensive grid upgrades.

Some of these non-wires alternatives utilize batteries, like the Marcus Garvey Apartments microgrid that went up this spring. That project showed that creative regulatory changes and targeted incentives can encourage innovative projects.

More impressive is the storage project that works without such assistance.

Arizona Public Service pulled off this feat with its Punkin Center project, which utilizes a 2 megawatt/ 8 megawatt-hour battery system from AES to avoid a wires upgrade for a remote desert town.

Load growth there would have required a 20-mile cable upgrade, but APS determined it could fix the issue with a locally-sited battery for less than half the upfront cost. This wasn't driven by a regulatory imperative to re-envision the grid or fight climate change; it simply made economic sense.

Leaders from both companies will discuss the project during a fireside chat at the Energy Storage Summit.

Big energy companies bought their way into storage

Legacy energy companies snapped up storage startups throughout the year.

It started with Demand Energy's acquisition by European utility and renewables developer Enel in January. Then the Finnish engine company Wartsila bought Greensmith in May. Scottish mobile power provider Aggreko picked up Younicos in July for $52 million.

Later on, AES signed a joint venture with Siemens to merge their storage practices under the name Fluence.

This continues a trend from last year, in which Engie took a controlling stake in Green Charge and French energy giant Total picked up Saft in the largest battery acquisition ever.

The impact of these acquisitions hasn't fully materialized yet. Once complete, though, the deals promise to expand the storage industry in meaningful ways.

They give once small companies a major balance sheet to assure customers and financiers they can be trusted with a large contract. They also give storage startups the resources to expand faster than they would otherwise.

Green Charge, Greensmith and Demand Energy have all hinted at international expansion to come, although we haven't seen that materialize just yet. AES explicitly referenced Siemens' sales presence in 160 companies as a motivation for the partnership. That expansion may materialize in the coming year.

It's official: All the biggest solar developers are looking at storage too

Solar-plus-storage has inspired eager chatter for some time now, but this year companies finally started to follow through on the premise.

The top utility-scale solar installers have either developed storage or are actively pursuing it, GTM reported in June. Many of them have begun bidding hybrid projects, which means we could start seeing a bump in deployments in the next two or three years. Installed and operating projects are still rare.

GTM Research analyst Daniel Finn-Foley will dissect recent solar-plus-storage PPAs with executives from Cypress Creek and Borrego Solar at Energy Storage Summit. Later on, journalist Jeff St. John will lead a debate over whether centralized or distributed storage locations make more sense.

Meanwhile, the residential solar leaders expanded their storage pairings as well.

SolarCity combined with Tesla via a merger. Sunrun pushed ahead with its BrightBox solar-plus-storage package, which now accounts for 10 percent of its direct sales in California. Vivint formed a partnership with Mercedes-Benz Energy to deliver residential batteries, although it's been quiet since.

Storage remains a tiny slice of these installers' business, but that's in large part because few markets have compelling economics for it. By at least getting started, these companies will gain experience before the markets for firmed solar or distributed storage heat up.

Virtual power plants become more of real thing

It's a lot easier to talk about virtual power plants than to build one. This year, though, some real, sizable projects gained steam.

Advanced Microgrid Solutions launched the first phase of its flagship deal with Southern California Edison in November. The first batch included 2 megawatts of capacity, but more will phase in over the year to come. After years of pitching the concept of virtual power plants, the company gets to show the goods.

In October, Sonnen announced a contract to put its batteries into a development of 2,900 high-performance homes in Arizona. Earlier, Sunrun launched a partnership with National Grid to deliver BrightBox systems in New York, with a goal of aggregating the resources for grid services.

And the drumbeat of smaller pilots continued. Austin is building distributed storage and solar across the city. Sunverge announced small utility pilots with APS, Green Mountain Power and Lakeland Electric, but deployed 250 units with Australian utility AGL.

The hype is likely to outshine the reality for some time, but these early projects build evidence that distributed power resources can be valuable to the grid.

Carmakers and countries commit to electric vehicles

China, the world's largest car market, announced in September that it's researching a ban on internal combustion engines. Such a measure could drastically accelerate the speed of uptake for electric vehicles.

California may follow suit. Other markets have already committed: Norway pledged to sell only electric cars by 2025; France targeted 2040; the U.K. soon followed with its own 2040 pledge.

Carmaker Volvo said all its cars would have electric motors starting in 2019 (many of them will still burn gas or diesel as hybrids). General Motors signaled its commitment to a "zero emissions future" with a roster of new electric offerings, although it stayed shy on how long it would take to realize that vision.

All these promises will need to be backed up by action; pledging a major change in 2040 means nothing without concrete intermediate results. Some commenters think EVs will have taken over by then on the strength of market forces alone.

These promises do amount to a widespread endorsement of EVs over the coming years, and that means more battery production. The EV industry's success fuels the manufacturing scale and cost declines that the stationary storage needs for its own growth.

New York still hasn't figured out how to use storage

New York's Reforming the Energy Vision project is reshaping the grid to support cleaner power and more efficient utilization of resources. Storage sounds like a perfect fit for those goals, but almost no capacity has been deployed in the years since REV got started.

The challenges, detailed here, include unfinished storage tariffs, lack of long term contracts for capacity, a fire code that keeps New York City mostly off limits, and utilities that dragged their feet on deployments long enough to get an explicit rebuke from regulators.

The year ended with a bang: five months after the state legislature unanimously passed a bill to create a storage target, Governor Andrew Cuomo decided to sign it into law. That triggers a process of setting an appropriate target and creating government programs to help meet it.

Whether these efforts produce a real market remains to be seen, but the state set itself on track for more storage activity in the coming years.

Storage might beat out a gas peaker plant for the first time

Storage developers have spoken hungrily about their ability to take the place of gas plants for peak power. Now it might actually happen.

NRG's efforts to build the Puente gas plant in Oxnard, California, ran into opposition in the final stages of regulatory approval. A coalition of clean energy advocates, environmental justice advocates and the city itself pushed back against the proposal, saying that a gas plant would be an unnecessary expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure when cleaner alternatives exist.

Those arguments had been heard elsewhere, but this time, the grid operator agreed. CAISO studied the local grid needs and determined storage and other distributed assets could do the job of the gas plant. That just left the question of relative cost, which CAISO said could only really be determined by industry bids in a request for offers.

The regulators reviewing the case announced they planned to reject the plant. Then NRG asked for a suspension of the approval process to allow for the RFO, and the regulators granted it. 

This story is still developing. It's not yet clear just how competitive the storage bids will be compared to the cost of a gas plant, or how much regulators will weigh the value of clean, flexible resources relative to gas burning infrastructure that would only rarely operate.

The gas plant could still win out, but if it doesn't, this will be the first time storage triumphs in a head-to-head peaker contest.

Tesla promises the world's biggest battery in less than 100 days...and delivers

After betting he could deliver the world's largest battery in 100 days or it would be free, Elon Musk followed through. 

The 100 megawatt/129 megawatt-hour facility began testing in South Australia just about when Americans sat down for their Thanksgiving feasts. Much like Aliso Canyon, it showcased the unique speed with which storage can arrive on the grid in response to urgent needs. 

When it comes to the flagship projects, the company delivers in a big way. Back on the home front, though, Tesla has had trouble maintaining timely deliveries of batteries to its typical storage customers. 

As the company matures, it will need to balance rapid response to emergency opportunities with steady and reliable shipments to customers. It's currently ramping up Gigafactory production to that end, while working out kinks in the manufacturing line for the Model 3.

That's an important step, because grid emergencies like South Australia won't stop coming, and Tesla could be called on again for rapid response mega-batteries before too long.  

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[smoresswift]

The 10 Stories That Defined Energy Storage in 2017

Energy storage proved itself in 2017.

The industry stepped up with two major, high-speed deployments to resolve grid emergencies. Utility-scale projects got bigger and longer lasting. Major international conglomerates bought up storage startups. And all the major solar developers started getting into the game.

Much of the action remained at the pilot stage. But some projects showed that storage economics already make sense without subsidies, grants or other interventions -- in the right circumstances, of course.

GTM will be diving deep on these themes at the Energy Storage Summit in San Francisco December 12-13. In the meantime, here's a roundup of the key developments from 2017.

Storage backs up Southern California grid after record gas leaks

Aliso Canyon just might be the biggest energy storage story ever. 

The details are well known in the industry -- not so much outside of it.

Here's the gist: California suffered the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, resulting in constraints gas for peak power generation around L.A. and San Diego; to meet the shortfall, the state deployed 100 megawatts of storage across several sites in a stunning six months.

The episode showed that storage can respond to capacity constraints far more quickly than traditional power plants, and can slip more easily into populous areas like suburban San Diego and Los Angeles.

That success -- the feared blackouts never materialized over the summer peak season -- puts storage in the toolkit for future grid crises. And it bolsters the case for using distributed batteries to meet local capacity needs, shifting away from reliance on gas plants. 

This could only happen because California had already prioritized storage policy and built out a regulatory understanding of the technology. If other states want the flexibility to respond to surprises as quickly as California did, they need to put in the work now.

Solar-plus-storage contracts drive prices to new lows

The year started with a solar-plus-storage record: AES inked a contract for a Kauai project at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will combine 28 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with 20 megawatts of five-hour duration batteries, producing 11 percent of the island's electricity.

That project managed to outsize an earlier Tesla/SolarCity deal on the island and shave a few cents off the unit price. In May, another project made this one look like an appetizer.

Tucson Electric Power contracted with NextEra Energy Resources to build out a major solar-plus storage project at a 20-year PPA rate below 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. The facility will pair 100 megawatts of solar generation with a 30 megawatt/ 120 megawatt-hour storage system. (That's as big as the AES Escondido system, which was the largest of its kind until Tesla outdid it in Australia).

That announcement turned heads and set of a flurry of number crunching, as analysts and rivals tried to unpack how such a low price could be possible. The investment tax credit plays a role, as does NextEra's ability to source equipment at aggressive price points. 

Crucially, this is happening in sunny Arizona, where the abundance of solar generation is creating value for dispatchable power. Storage thrives when its flexibility is compensated, and Arizona's regulated utilities can do just that.

Non-wires alternatives start to pencil out on their own

New York authorized its utilities to make money by avoiding more expensive grid upgrades.

Some of these non-wires alternatives utilize batteries, like the Marcus Garvey Apartments microgrid that went up this spring. That project showed that creative regulatory changes and targeted incentives can encourage innovative projects.

More impressive is the storage project that works without such assistance.

Arizona Public Service pulled off this feat with its Punkin Center project, which utilizes a 2 megawatt/ 8 megawatt-hour battery system from AES to avoid a wires upgrade for a remote desert town.

Load growth there would have required a 20-mile cable upgrade, but APS determined it could fix the issue with a locally-sited battery for less than half the upfront cost. This wasn't driven by a regulatory imperative to re-envision the grid or fight climate change; it simply made economic sense.

Leaders from both companies will discuss the project during a fireside chat at the Energy Storage Summit.

Big energy companies bought their way into storage

Legacy energy companies snapped up storage startups throughout the year.

It started with Demand Energy's acquisition by European utility and renewables developer Enel in January. Then the Finnish engine company Wartsila bought Greensmith in May. Scottish mobile power provider Aggreko picked up Younicos in July for $52 million.

Later on, AES signed a joint venture with Siemens to merge their storage practices under the name Fluence.

This continues a trend from last year, in which Engie took a controlling stake in Green Charge and French energy giant Total picked up Saft in the largest battery acquisition ever.

The impact of these acquisitions hasn't fully materialized yet. Once complete, though, the deals promise to expand the storage industry in meaningful ways.

They give once small companies a major balance sheet to assure customers and financiers they can be trusted with a large contract. They also give storage startups the resources to expand faster than they would otherwise.

Green Charge, Greensmith and Demand Energy have all hinted at international expansion to come, although we haven't seen that materialize just yet. AES explicitly referenced Siemens' sales presence in 160 companies as a motivation for the partnership. That expansion may materialize in the coming year.

It's official: All the biggest solar developers are looking at storage too

Solar-plus-storage has inspired eager chatter for some time now, but this year companies finally started to follow through on the premise.

The top utility-scale solar installers have either developed storage or are actively pursuing it, GTM reported in June. Many of them have begun bidding hybrid projects, which means we could start seeing a bump in deployments in the next two or three years. Installed and operating projects are still rare.

GTM Research analyst Daniel Finn-Foley will dissect recent solar-plus-storage PPAs with executives from Cypress Creek and Borrego Solar at Energy Storage Summit. Later on, journalist Jeff St. John will lead a debate over whether centralized or distributed storage locations make more sense.

Meanwhile, the residential solar leaders expanded their storage pairings as well.

SolarCity combined with Tesla via a merger. Sunrun pushed ahead with its BrightBox solar-plus-storage package, which now accounts for 10 percent of its direct sales in California. Vivint formed a partnership with Mercedes-Benz Energy to deliver residential batteries, although it's been quiet since.

Storage remains a tiny slice of these installers' business, but that's in large part because few markets have compelling economics for it. By at least getting started, these companies will gain experience before the markets for firmed solar or distributed storage heat up.

Virtual power plants become more of real thing

It's a lot easier to talk about virtual power plants than to build one. This year, though, some real, sizable projects gained steam.

Advanced Microgrid Solutions launched the first phase of its flagship deal with Southern California Edison in November. The first batch included 2 megawatts of capacity, but more will phase in over the year to come. After years of pitching the concept of virtual power plants, the company gets to show the goods.

In October, Sonnen announced a contract to put its batteries into a development of 2,900 high-performance homes in Arizona. Earlier, Sunrun launched a partnership with National Grid to deliver BrightBox systems in New York, with a goal of aggregating the resources for grid services.

And the drumbeat of smaller pilots continued. Austin is building distributed storage and solar across the city. Sunverge announced small utility pilots with APS, Green Mountain Power and Lakeland Electric, but deployed 250 units with Australian utility AGL.

The hype is likely to outshine the reality for some time, but these early projects build evidence that distributed power resources can be valuable to the grid.

Carmakers and countries commit to electric vehicles

China, the world's largest car market, announced in September that it's researching a ban on internal combustion engines. Such a measure could drastically accelerate the speed of uptake for electric vehicles.

California may follow suit. Other markets have already committed: Norway pledged to sell only electric cars by 2025; France targeted 2040; the U.K. soon followed with its own 2040 pledge.

Carmaker Volvo said all its cars would have electric motors starting in 2019 (many of them will still burn gas or diesel as hybrids). General Motors signaled its commitment to a "zero emissions future" with a roster of new electric offerings, although it stayed shy on how long it would take to realize that vision.

All these promises will need to be backed up by action; pledging a major change in 2040 means nothing without concrete intermediate results. Some commenters think EVs will have taken over by then on the strength of market forces alone.

These promises do amount to a widespread endorsement of EVs over the coming years, and that means more battery production. The EV industry's success fuels the manufacturing scale and cost declines that the stationary storage needs for its own growth.

New York still hasn't figured out how to use storage

New York's Reforming the Energy Vision project is reshaping the grid to support cleaner power and more efficient utilization of resources. Storage sounds like a perfect fit for those goals, but almost no capacity has been deployed in the years since REV got started.

The challenges, detailed here, include unfinished storage tariffs, lack of long term contracts for capacity, a fire code that keeps New York City mostly off limits, and utilities that dragged their feet on deployments long enough to get an explicit rebuke from regulators.

The year ended with a bang: five months after the state legislature unanimously passed a bill to create a storage target, Governor Andrew Cuomo decided to sign it into law. That triggers a process of setting an appropriate target and creating government programs to help meet it.

Whether these efforts produce a real market remains to be seen, but the state set itself on track for more storage activity in the coming years.

Storage might beat out a gas peaker plant for the first time

Storage developers have spoken hungrily about their ability to take the place of gas plants for peak power. Now it might actually happen.

NRG's efforts to build the Puente gas plant in Oxnard, California, ran into opposition in the final stages of regulatory approval. A coalition of clean energy advocates, environmental justice advocates and the city itself pushed back against the proposal, saying that a gas plant would be an unnecessary expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure when cleaner alternatives exist.

Those arguments had been heard elsewhere, but this time, the grid operator agreed. CAISO studied the local grid needs and determined storage and other distributed assets could do the job of the gas plant. That just left the question of relative cost, which CAISO said could only really be determined by industry bids in a request for offers.

The regulators reviewing the case announced they planned to reject the plant. Then NRG asked for a suspension of the approval process to allow for the RFO, and the regulators granted it. 

This story is still developing. It's not yet clear just how competitive the storage bids will be compared to the cost of a gas plant, or how much regulators will weigh the value of clean, flexible resources relative to gas burning infrastructure that would only rarely operate.

The gas plant could still win out, but if it doesn't, this will be the first time storage triumphs in a head-to-head peaker contest.

Tesla promises the world's biggest battery in less than 100 days...and delivers

After betting he could deliver the world's largest battery in 100 days or it would be free, Elon Musk followed through. 

The 100 megawatt/129 megawatt-hour facility began testing in South Australia just about when Americans sat down for their Thanksgiving feasts. Much like Aliso Canyon, it showcased the unique speed with which storage can arrive on the grid in response to urgent needs. 

When it comes to the flagship projects, the company delivers in a big way. Back on the home front, though, Tesla has had trouble maintaining timely deliveries of batteries to its typical storage customers. 

As the company matures, it will need to balance rapid response to emergency opportunities with steady and reliable shipments to customers. It's currently ramping up Gigafactory production to that end, while working out kinks in the manufacturing line for the Model 3.

That's an important step, because grid emergencies like South Australia won't stop coming, and Tesla could be called on again for rapid response mega-batteries before too long.  

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8265708 http://ift.tt/2AvPecF via IFTTT