The Second Coming Of Storage In America

America is undergoing a second wave of storage growth. The first wave came between 2011 and 2013, when grid-scale projects backed by the government stimulus came online. The second wave is based largely on two applications for lithium-on batteries: frequency regulation and demand charge management. These two applications helped the U.S. storage market grow 243 percent in 2015, according to the new Energy Storage Monitor from GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association. In 2020, America’s energy storage market will be 28 times bigger than it was in 2015. This third wave of growth, says GTM Senior Storage Analyst Ravi Manghani, will be catalyzed by a broader range of revenue streams as regional wholesale markets get more sophisticated. In this week's show, we'll look at the trends behind America's storage surge. In the second segment, we'll talk about China's war on coal. In the last segment, we'll discuss the consequences of Vivint's decision to kill an acquisition agreement with SunEdison.