Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Two thirds of Swedish solar tradable under certificate program
 The amount of installed solar power operating in the Norwegian-Swedish electricity certificate system has increased considerably over the past three years, thanks to a surge in new installations especially in the Swedish renewable energy market.

According to provisional figures provided to pv magazine by Johan Lindahl, which is responsible for writing the IEA-PVPS report about the Swedish PV market, the installed capacity of the PV systems connected to the Swedish grid that have received approval to operate in this market has increased from 49.1 MW at the end of 2015 to 94.3 MW at the end of last year. At the end of 2014 and 2013, the PV capacity approved for the electricity certificate system was 24.1 MW and 10.9 MW, respectively.

The number of produced certificates from solar systems per year increased from 24,544 MWh in 2015 to 45,467 MWh in 2016, while the number of produced certificates eligible kWh per installed power and year grew year-on-year from 499.1 kWh/kW to 537.4 kWh/kW.

According to Lindahl, around 24% of the electricity produced from PV in Sweden currently receives certificates. The Swedish PV expert claims there are several reasons which have prevented PV from taking advantage of the electricity certificate system, and why PV system owners refrain from applying. One of the main reasons, Lindahl said, is that several PV system owners believe that the income provided by the certificate scheme is not worth the required extra administrative burden.

“Another reason for this,” Lindahl explains, “is that the meter that registers the electricity produced by a PV system is often placed at the interface between the building and the grid. This has the consequence that it is only excess production from a PV system that generates certificates and the solar electricity that is self-consumed internally in the building is not awarded any certificates.”

PV system owners, however, may get the certificates on both the excess electricity and on the self-consumed electricity. But to get them also on the self-consumed part an investment in an extra meter that registers self-consumption is needed, and this investment, especially for small-sized installations, in not negligible.

Popular content

The Norwegian-Swedish joint electricity certificate system for renewable energies received a new push in April, after the governments of Sweden and Norway agreed to extend it through 2030.

The two countries, which have had a common electricity certificate market for renewable energies since January 2012, reached a compromise that will allow Sweden to add a further 18 TWh of capacity and Norway to add new projects to the scheme only by 2021. Sweden and Norway started to disagree on the future of the program last year, with the first asking for an extension and the second seeking to leave the scheme.

Electricity Certificates, both Swedish and Norwegian, are traded on the Nord Pool exchange with the price agreed between purchasers and sellers. The two countries release tradable certificates to renewable energy producers for every MWh they generate for the first 15 years of a power generator’s lifetime. The scheme is managed by the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) and the Swedish Energy Agency.

According to the latest statistics available, Sweden had around 140 MW of installed PV capacity at the end of 2016, while Norway had only 11 MW of solar connected to its power network.

Output: Just above two thirds of Sweden's installed solar capacity can be traded on the Nord Pool under the certification program agreed with Norway. Approved solar capacity in Sweden has jumped from 49.1 MW at the end of 2015 to 94.3 MW a year later, compared with a total installed base of 140 MW. The barrier to greater use of the certification program is the cost of installing a meter to measure domestically consumed solar generation. Without one, only excess energy that is fed back into the grid is awarded certificates.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Marketers will spend $1.2bn in 2019 on kids digital advertising
 Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don't worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here.

The kids digital advertising market is expected to hit $1.2 billion and represent 28 percent of all advertising directed at kids, according to a report by accounting firm PwC. Digital kids company Super Awesome commissioned the report.

In the past, kids were targeted almost exclusively through TV spending. But the PwC Kids Digital Advertising Report 2017 found that the under-13 audience has shifted its attention to digital media consumption on platforms such as smartphones, tablets, and PCs. The reported measured the ad markets in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

“The kids media market is going through the same transition which the mainstream space has been experiencing in recent years,” said Mark Maitland, media strategy partner at PwC, in a statement. “There are very strong (and structural) tailwinds driving the growth of the kids digital ad market, which we believe could reach 28 percent of total ad spend by 2019.”

Image Credit: PwC

This market is growing by 25 percent a year, and brands are rapidly shifting their spending on ads to digital. PwC said that increasing data privacy requirements for kids’ online activities (e.g. COPPA in the U.S. and GDPR in Europe) continue to drive demand for compliant digital media technology, where kids are only shown ads that are appropriate for them.

PwC expects some advertisers and brands to move away from publisher-centric relationships and adopt purpose-built media platforms to deliver scale and efficiency. The firm drew attention to the emergence of this “kidtech” space, specialist platforms, and technology combining data privacy with extremely large-scale audience reach.

Growth is also expected in programmatic advertising aimed at kids. It’s a complex proposition, given the compliance requirements, but one that emerging platforms are now solving. PwC estimates that 10 to 20 percent of digital ad spend for kids will be on compliant programmatic advertising by 2019.

In an email, SuperAwesome CEO Dylan Collins said, “After decades of dominance by TV, the entire sector is going through a structural shift which is clearly going to reshape the landscape over the next few years.”

Output: Spending on children's digital advertising will increase to $1.2bn in 2019, with digital advertising predicted to make up more than a quarter of all advertising directed at children, according to a report by PwC. It said the shift to smartphone, PC and tablet use among under-13s was behind the trend, while requirements for data privacy for children while online were creating a demand for compliant digital media technology that ensures children see only ads that are suitable. The report also noted that growth was expected in programmatic advertising for kids, as emerging platforms helped marketers conform to compliance requirements.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
One in four UK families who rent need loans to pay moving costs
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One in four families renting homes in England is falling into hundreds of pounds of “bad debt” due to the cost of moving house, new findings show.

Having to pay letting fees, removal van hires, cleaning costs and other requirements that come with moving properties has seen thousands of families taking out debt in the form of credit cards, overdraft, bank loans or payday loans, according to a report by housing charity Shelter.

A total of 255,944 private renting families took on such debt the last time they moved, with the cost of moving home amounting to an average of £1,619 across England – and reaching £1,707 in London.

The figures show that just 10 per cent of the cost accounted for letting fees, with the rest an accumulation of added costs such as removal van hire, paying double rent and payment for new accomodation in advance.

Shelter has warned that Government plans to ban fees to letting agents in England will not resolve the issue, and the charity is calling for the introduction of longer and more stable contracts for renting tenants.

The findings, based on a YouGov survey of 3,981 private renters in England, also shows that one in five private renting families – or 322,120 – have moved home three or more times in the past five years.

Around one in four private renters have children in their household, of which over half have moved between privately rented homes, according to Shelter.

One private renter, named only as Tracy, has had to move six times in the past seven years with her two children, aged five and seven, and said the cost of constantly having to move home has become a significant burden for her.

“When you add up things like removal vans and new furniture, the cost of having to move home all the time really starts to pile up. It seems that unless you have loads of savings, taking on debt from credit cards is pretty much the only way to cover it – you just don’t have a choice,” she said.

Recommended Number of private renters made homeless has trebled since 2010

“Having to move home every year or so makes it hard enough for me and my family, without also having to take on these debts which just get bigger and bigger and pile on even more pressure.

“If I could get a five-year tenancy it would make a massive difference – I could plan ahead, save money and get a grip on these debts. Not to mention the joy it’d give me and my family to actually have a home of our own for longer than a few months.”

Another private renter, named only as Emma, said having to keep moving home has driven her and her family further and further into credit card debt.

The teacher trainee, who rents in Folkestone with her husband and three children, said: “The first few times we moved we could borrow from family to cover the costs, but we have had to move so often that we now have to use credit cards and loans,” she said.

“Obviously, unlike with family and friends, these loans have fees and interest attached that can be really hard to pay back. Currently we have about £15,000 in debt because we’re having to move home every one or two years.

“About four years ago we took out one lower interest bank loan to try and pay all these debts off, but because we’ve had to carry on moving home, the costs have racked up and again we are back to square one.”

It comes after an analysis by The Independent revealed that the number of private renters being made homeless has more than trebled under the Conservative Government, with thousands of renters being deemed officially homeless by local councils each month after being evicted by private landlords and struggling to pay rents.

Official figures show a huge rise in people becoming homeless at the end of assured short hold tenancies (ASTs) – the most common agreement used by private landlords – since 2010, exposing the increasing unaffordability and instability of the private rental market.

Polly Neate, Shelter chief executive, said: “It’s heart-breaking that families are being forced into unaffordable debt just to cover all the costs of moving house so frequently, thanks to short unstable contracts.

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PA UK news in pictures 29 April 2023 England’s flanker Marlie Packer celebrates with the trophy and teammates after winning the Women’s Six Nations Grand Slam at the end of the Six Nations international women’s rugby union match between England and France at Twickenham in south-west London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 28 April 2023 Lucy Williams, from Aberfan, holds her son Daniel Williams, one, as he takes the handbag of the Princess of Wales, during her visit with her husband the Prince of Wales, to the Aberfan memorial garden, to pay their respects to those who lost their lives during the Aberfan disaster on October 21st 1966 PA UK news in pictures 27 April 2023 Teachers on the picket line outside Bristol Cathedral School, College Square, Bristol, as they take strike action in a dispute over pay PA UK news in pictures 26 April 2023 Protesters wait for the arrival of King Charles III and the Queen Consort for their visit to Liverpool Central Library PA UK news in pictures 25 April 2023 Wreaths are laid at the Cenotaph in central London, in commemoration for Anzac Day PA UK news in pictures 24 April 2023 Waves crash over Tynemouth pier on the North East coast of England PA UK news in pictures 23 April 2023 People cross the finish line at the 2023 London Marathon Getty UK news in pictures 22 April 2023 A Wrexham fan in a Deadpool costume ahead of the Vanarama National League match at The Racecourse Ground, Wrexham PA UK news in pictures 21 April 2023 A demonstrator wears a costume as people protest during the Extinction Rebellion's 'The Big One' event, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 20 April 2023 The funeral cortege of Paul O’Grady travels through the village of Aldington, Kent ahead of his funeral at St Rumwold’s Church PA UK news in pictures 19 April 2023 Georgia Harrison, who was a victim of revenge porn, at a demonstration organised by Refuge outside the Houses of Parliament, calling for a violence against women and girls code of practice to be added to the ‘Online safety bill’ PA

“We speak to parents every day who want nothing more than to have control over their lives, and provide stability – both financially and in a settled home – for their children, but instead are constantly forced into packing up and moving on.

“The Government can change all this by updating laws to offer renters longer and more stable contracts, giving them and their children a secure place to call home and a brighter future.”

A Department for Communities and Local Government spokesman, said: “Everyone deserves a safe, secure place to live including those renting. That’s why we’re banning letting fees for tenants to reduce costs of moving and have produced a model tenancy agreement to support those who want a longer, more stable agreement.

“We’ve also been working with the National Housing Federation and British Property Federation to get their members to offer ‘family-friendly’ tenancies of three years or more for purpose built rental homes.

“We know that more needs to be done to boost home building, which is why we’ve doubled the housing budget to £8 billion and putting into action the largest affordable housing programme for 40 years.”

Output: One in four families in rented homes are taking on significant debt to fund moving house, according to housing charity Shelter. The letting fees, cleaning costs, removal van hire and other expenses associated with moving have led families to take on credit card and overdraft debt, bank loans and even payday loans. During their last move, 255,944 privately renting families took on debt, with the cost of moving adding up to about £1,619 across England and £1,707 in London. Letting agent fees accounted for about 10% of moving costs and Shelter said government plans to ban such fees would not be enough to deal with the issue.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Arizona to incentivise power use when the sun is shining
 Dive Brief:

Arizona Public Service (APS) has proposed a slate of new energy programs and rates that will help customers conserve energy and control their usage, including energy storage, demand response and load management programs.

The proposals include incentives for smart thermostats, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, electric school buses and charging infrastructure, energy storage and water heater timers. The plan also calls for an increase in funding for APS' energy storage program, from $4 million to $6 million.

The utility is also proposing an educational component to ensure customers know best how to utilize the programs, including rate structures that encourage home pre-cooling, shifting the use of appliances to off-peak hours, and staggering the use of major appliances.

Dive Insight:

APS is rolling out a new generation of load management and efficiency ideas in its service territory, explaining that traditional measures like LED light bulbs and efficient appliances are now commonplace.

Stacy Derstine, APS vice president of customer service, said the utility is proposing an integrated set of programs, including education, to ensure that “the result is increased choice and control for customers when it comes to their energy usage.”

APS says its new offerings would reward customers for conserving power when it’s most expensive, from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., and would encourage using energy when the state's solar resources are abundantly producing energy.

"In addition to helping customers save by conserving during peak demand hours, this targeted energy efficiency approach can help better integrate renewable resources and delay the need for future infrastructure," the utility said in its announcement. "The programs work hand-in-hand with APS’s new rate plans to help customers achieve maximum savings."

In addition to the new programs, the utility will continue several current rebates, including programs for residential HVAC, business solutions, new home construction and home performance with Energy Star.

Last month, the Arizona Corporation Commission allowed APS to raise rates and approved a settlement with solar advocates that establishes a new compensation scheme and allows customers to lock in their rate for years.The decision means a typical residential customer will see bills rise 4.5%, or about $6/month.

Output: Arizona Public Service is set to roll out a slew of measures aimed at encouraging customers to save energy and control usage, while also helping integrate renewable resources into the grid. The programme includes incentives to buy smart thermostats, energy storage and water heater timers and electric vehicle charging infrastructure, as well as electric school buses. The initiative also includes an educational component, enabling customers to optimise their use of the programme, and rewards for those who reduce peak-time energy use.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Real estate insurtech Rhino raises $1.94m in funding round
 Rhino, a New York City-based real estate tech and insurtech startup that provides a security deposit solution for renters and landlords, raised $1.94m in seed funding round.

The round was led by ff Venture Capital with participation from Lakehouse Ventures, Picus Capital, FJ Labs, Red Dog, angels and real estate owners.

The company will use the funds to hire new talent, continue building its core technology, and implement a targeted marketing strategy for the New York City market.

Led by Paraag Sarva, co-founder and CEO, Rhino provides a security deposit solution that allows renters to pay a small monthly fee instead of a large security deposit while landlords receive double the protection for the same items typically covered by security deposits. Pricing is personalized for each renter and starts as low as $19/month for a $2,500/month apartment. In turn, Rhino commits to insure the landlord and only seeks reimbursement from the renter after a review of the issue from both sides.

The company will initially focus on the New York City real estate market, where average rents have reached over $4,000/month in Manhattan.

Rhino is partnering with Canopius US Insurance who will underwrite its product.

FinSMEs

07/09/2017

Output: New York City-based insurtech start-up Rhino has raised $1.94m in a seed funding led by ff Venture Capital, and featuring participation from Lakehouse Ventures and Picus Capital, among others. Rhino has developed a security deposit solution for renters and landlords, initially focusing on New York City. It will use the new funds to expand its team, continue building its core technology, and roll out a targeted marketing strategy.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Renewables hot spots burdened with regional interconnection costs
 Dive Brief:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week rejected tariff amendment proposals from California's grid operator that would have developed a new class of participating transmission owner for whom low-voltage, generator-interconnection-driven network upgrade costs would be allocated regionally, rather than locally.

Republicans on the commission, however, were unconvinced the change would allocate the costs of network upgrades to those that benefit.

At issue is Valley Electric Association, which is one of four participating transmission owners (PTOs) in the California ISO, though it supports only a small percentage of the grid's load.

Dive Insight:

The debate boils down to this: renewable generators see Valley Electric's system as a good place to locate renewable infrastructure — but it is small, and located in Nevada, and at least one commissioner said its ratepayers should not have to bear the costs of system improvements that will benefit others.

"The location of Valley Electric has led to a volume of interconnection requests to meet California’s renewable targets that is grossly disproportionate to its customer base," former Chairman Cheryl LaFleur wrote in her dissent. "It is simply unfair to require the 0.27 percent of CAISO’s customer base in Nevada to bear the costs of these interconnections."

For some comparison: Valley Electric has an annual gross load of 545 GWh, according to the commission's order—less than 1% of the system's annual gross load. Pacific Gas & Electric, however, is CAISO’s largest PTO and has an annual gross load of 91,500 GWh.

CAISO's proposal would have set a new "Certified Small PTO" for whom low-voltage, generator-interconnection-driven network upgrade costs would be allocated regionally, rather than locally. The interconnection costs for Vallery Electric's system, said LaFleur, "are not remotely commensurate with the benefits they receive."

The two new Republican members, Chairman Neil Chatterjee and Commissioner Robert Powelson, disagreed.

They noted that FERC has previously considered proposals regarding alternative cost allocation methodologies for network upgrades assigned to low-load zones. "However, CAISO has not demonstrated that its proposal allocates the costs of network upgrades to those that benefit from the network upgrades," they wrote in FERC's order.

Output: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rejected a proposal by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) to allocate renewable interconnection costs regionally, rather than locally. The Valley Electric system, based in Nevada, has has an annual gross load of 545 GWh, compared to Pacific Gas & Electric, CAISO’s largest participating transmission owner, which has 91,500 GWh. "It is simply unfair to require the 0.27% of CAISO’s customer base in Nevada to bear the costs of these interconnections", said former chairman Cheryl LaFleur.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
MIT Technology Review releases its 35 Innovators Under 35 list
 MIT Technology Review, as a rule, focuses on the technology first—the breakthrough, the surprise, the accidental discovery with the potential to upend the way we live. Our annual look at 35 outstanding innovators under 35 is a reminder that behind all those innovations are people with dreams, fears, and ambitions. Sometimes they hack away at a problem for years before figuring out a way forward. Sometimes they stumble on a solution they didn’t know they were searching for. We hope these portraits offer a sense of the variety of work being done in technology, and a sense of what’s coming next.

Output: MIT Review, the magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has unveiled its annual list of 35 Innovators below 35 years of age, covering inventors, pioneers, entrepreneurs, visionaries and humanitarians. Among those listed are Abdigani Diriye, who founded Somalia’s first incubator and start-up accelerator, Rachel Haurwitz, who is overseeing the commercialisation of gene-editing technology CRISPR, Lorenz Meier, who is developing an open-source autopilot for drones, and Fabian Menges, who is working on a method of measuring temperatures at the nanoscale.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Thermal storage lacks a 'celebrity evangelist'
 A vital technology for securing deep greenhouse gas reductions exists and works well, but still hasn't achieved widespread deployment.

Thermal energy storage has succeeded in the field for decades. Precooling an insulated vat of liquid can chop an electricity bill and reduce peak load, as companies like Calmac and Ice Energy have shown. An experimental housing development in Canada uses underground thermal energy storage, powered by solar energy in the summer, to cover its heating needs through the frigid Alberta winters.

Such products address a decarbonization challenge that cleaner grid power alone cannot touch. Buildings consume 70 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S., and emit 40 percent of the nation's carbon emissions. Any holistic attempt to tackle climate change must confront building-sector energy use.

Stanford professor Mark Jacobson, for instance, utilizes underground thermal storage as a pillar of his roadmap to decarbonize the whole U.S. energy system, because it reduces overall electrical demand and gas consumption for heating. When a bevy of academics critiqued that study this summer, they specifically called out the reliance on this rarely implemented tool. How can you save the world, the argument goes, with a technology whose real-world use is confined to an obscure housing pilot in Alberta?

Battery energy storage runs into obstacles related to its technological novelty. It's hard to get financiers to back a battery chemistry that hasn't seen much run time and is sold by a startup with a limited balance sheet. Despite that, the sector is booming -- GTM Research predicts a 22-fold increase in U.S. megawatt-hours deployed form 2016 to 2022.

Meanwhile, for thermal energy storage, questions of technological effectiveness are largely settled, but the segment hasn't scratched the surface of its potential impact. Indeed, that potential scarcely registers outside of a handful of companies that have staked their futures on it, and articulate the vision with a near-messianic zeal.

"I expect thermal will be bigger than batteries," said Ice Energy CEO Mike Hopkins, "because thermal loads are the large loads. They are the problematic loads; they are the loads that don't lend themselves to using electrical storage."

Much has been written about the rise of batteries. Less attention has gone to the thermal storage contingent, but they have their own strategies for growth. Their success could not only help utilities in their quest to subdue duck curves and steadily creeping peaks, but also play a central role in reducing carbon emissions from buildings worldwide.

The technology

The basic premise of thermal storage is to convert surplus electrical energy into heat or cold that can be used later.

That process takes on gridwide significance in light of the growth in peak demand, which utilities across the country attribute to their customers' simultaneous evening air conditioning usage.

Battery storage can serve that demand, but it suffers round-trip inefficiency losses; that's throwing away energy. The materials to store energy thermally cost less than lithium-ion chemistries do and theoretically last longer. The core technology is water in a plastic tank.

Plus, if you freeze that block of ice at night when both the ambient temperature and the cost of electricity fall, it takes less energy and money than doing so in the middle of a sunny, hot afternoon.

"The notion that you would store energy in the form of batteries for air conditioners is a really inherently bad idea," Hopkins said. "What you really want to do is get these thermal loads operating more efficiently. Make cooling when it's a good time to make cooling."

Ice Energy integrates its technology into air conditioning systems, to use unwanted noonday solar power or cheap nighttime electricity to precool a home before the evening peak. When electricity supply costs more or a utility is struggling to meet demand, the Ice Bear uses that block of ice to chill the building, instead of consuming electricity.

Whereas Ice Energy serves the commercial and residential markets, mostly in California, Calmac applies similar technology for massive skyscrapers and university campuses. Since the 1980s, the New Jersey company has racked up more than 4,000 customers in 60 countries.

Calmac's IceBank in action: It's a bunch of tanks storing cold liquid. (Image credit: Calmac)

Axiom Exergy applies the concept to grocery stores, reducing the utility bill for keeping food cool, and building in several hours' worth of backup cooling to carry through short outages.

Hot thermal storage functions much the same way as the cold stuff: Use excess power to heat up a liquid, then pipe it down to an insulated holding tank until it's needed to heat the building.

The Drake Landing Solar Community, in Alberta, Canada, uses underground district heating to store solar energy from the summertime. In the 2015-2016 winter season, the community supplied all of its heating needs from stored thermal energy; it supplied more than 90 percent of heating needs this way over each of the last five winters.

In a rarer variation, the technology allows the stored thermal energy to convert back into electricity. That's what Google's X lab is trying to do with a project dubbed Malta. It would use electricity to both heat up molten salts and cool tanks of liquid; when needed, the process reverses, using the unleashed hot and cold air to spin a turbine and regenerate electricity.

Crucially, thermal storage evades the toxicity and flammability concerns that come with high-powered lithium-ion batteries.

"Heating up water or making ice aren’t things that anyone’s going to be worried about," said Brett Simon, an energy storage analyst at GTM Research. "These systems aren’t using any reactive or potentially hazardous or flammable chemicals. That could lead people who are more cautious about battery storage to home thermal storage."

Obstacles to growth

Thermal storage has been around longer than advanced battery storage, but it has never broken out of a niche segment. Only a handful of companies install this in the U.S., compared to the dozens now chasing the battery storage market.

Cultural predilections play a role here, Ice Energy's Hopkins said. Battery storage only became popular in the last few years, in large part thanks to Elon Musk's knack for capturing the public imagination. That newfound awareness could be transferable.

"Because they know about lithium, when you talk about other forms of storage, it's not so foreign," he said.

Thermal storage, though, lacks a celebrity evangelist, and it can't charge a sexy sports car.

"The thing about thermal storage is it's invisible to the occupants," said Calmac CEO Mark MacCracken. "The people who go into these commercial buildings expect the building to be cool. They have zero understanding of how it's being cooled."

Companies seeking to displace conventional heating and cooling have to reach customers when they need that equipment, because it's not an everyday purchase.

New-build homes could be a promising market, but for existing homes, the time to buy a new AC unit typically comes as soon as the old one breaks. At that point, the customer has strong incentive to go with what's fastest and easiest, which probably isn't a wonky cooling technology they've never heard of.

Setting aside the consumer awareness challenge, there are technical limitations to be conquered.

One is getting into the design workflow for major building projects. Typically, MacCracken said, the architect designs a building and asks the engineers to cool it. They look at the peak cooling power needed to cover the hottest day of the year, add a margin for safety and call it a day.

Thermal storage requires a different kind of analysis and carries a perception of risk, even if it ultimately costs the same and delivers the same safety factor, MacCracken said. It takes time to break into that industrial workflow on a broader scale.

Even then, the proliferation of thermal storage depends on an economic tradeoff between business-as-usual and shifting demand away from peaks. That implicates rate design, which has proven itself to be an unreliable partner in pitching a product.

"The number-one problem is uncertainty with the tariffs, with the difference between the daytime and nighttime costs," said Mary Ann Piette, director of the Building Technology and Urban System Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. "The tariffs change a lot over time, and there’s not enough certainty on the economics."

Nationwide, time-differentiated electricity rates and demand response programs are gaining in numbers as utilities unpack the possibilities of distributed energy resources. Until those arrive, the benefits of thermal storage to consumers will remain largely theoretical, even if they're already tangible for the grid.

Geography matters

Climate helps determine the effectiveness of thermal storage, more so than it does for batteries.

The ideal market has a big diurnal swing, with a hot afternoon and a cooler night, Piette said. Desert environs like Arizona and inland California fit nicely.

In temperate Berkeley or the coastal Pacific Northwest, few homes have or need air conditioning. A residential Ice Cub would be of little use, whereas a battery would still be able to displace electrical load and provide backup power in an outage.

Similarly, underground thermal storage works brilliantly in frigid Alberta, but less so in a place that stays pretty warm through the winter. That technology also requires a high level of community buy-in: The systems work best when they serve a whole neighborhood or campus.

That sort of cooperation is hard to achieve short of greenfield housing developments; ripping up the streets to dig under existing developments is a harder sell. District heating has fared well in cold, northern communities with dense populations and a politics of social cooperation -- Scandinavia, basically. Having a master utility for gas, power and steam helps.

"Owning and operating models [for district heating] are not that common in our urban areas," Piette said. "It is possible to do these things, and I hope over time we can create new business models."

Density and diversity of loads make the proposition more attractive, she added, referencing an Amazon office in Seattle that buys waste heat expelled by a nearby data center.

Partner to move forward

The thermal storage startups I spoke with were clear on one thing: They need to partner with larger entities to scale.

Ice Energy found allies in utility Southern California Edison and independent power provider NRG. SCE awarded a contract for 26 megawatt-hours of distributed, customer-sited thermal storage. That provided the security of revenue needed to start ramping up production. It just left the problem of cashflow.

The 22-person startup couldn't front the cost of all those Ice Bears and wait 20 years to get paid back. Instead, Ice Energy sold the special-purpose vehicle for the project to NRG, which has a massive balance sheet. NRG technically owns the future returns of the fleet, and pays Ice Energy upfront to install the equipment.

If all goes according to plan, NRG pockets an easy return on investment with minimal risk: the revenue is contracted through a major utility with a sterling credit rating. It's up to Ice Energy to find businesses willing to host a total of 1,800 Ice Bears for free, enjoying $1,000 to $1,500 in electricity bill savings per year per unit (Ice Energy has deployed a total of 1,200 units since its inception).

The company also has contracts with two utilities in Massachusetts, and another 400 megawatts in various stages of negotiation, Hopkins said.

The residential Ice Cub, which replaces a conventional air conditioning unit while adding thermal storage capabilities, started shipping this summer. Hopkins hopes to scale that product through a distribution deal with a major solar installer.

"Right now, for us, 1,800 seems like a big number," he said. "With the home market, you might see tens of thousands in the U.S. getting deployed."

That home-cooling market should not be underestimated, particularly if thermal storage competes on price but adds more services, said GTM's Simon.

"If they get 1 percent of the home AC market, that's already going to be much larger than annual home battery sales," he noted.

Axiom Exergy is also looking to bigger entities to move its product. In this case: national grocery store chains. The company is developing multi-store rollouts with Whole Foods and Walmart to follow on initial demo installations.

"I don't see any roadblocks in the foreseeable future because there are so many grocery stores and cold storage facilities out there," said Sales Director John Lerch. "There's always going to be...this need to keep food chilled in order to distribute it everywhere."

Calmac, which graduated out of the startup phase a few decades ago, is discussing utility partnerships but doesn't have any yet. The company is also reaching out to a different kind of partner: battery storage companies.

The pitch is to offer a hybrid product for commercial customers, with thermal storage sized to thermal load and batteries to handle the leftover peak demand. That could achieve savings at a lower per-kilowatt-hour rate than if batteries had to shoulder the heating and cooling load.

Thermal storage complements a smarter grid than the one we have today. It will be hard to sell as long as a customer pays the same for a kilowatt-hour at grid-wide peak as at 3 a.m. But as customers become more grid-literate, and utilities start to send more sophisticated price signals to a range of distributed energy assets, demand for thermal storage technology could finally start to warm up.

Output: Thermal storage, in which energy is stored as either heat or cold, is losing out to battery storage because it doesn't have a high-profile backer of the likes of Elon Musk and doesn't charge sexy sports cars, said ICE Energy CEO Mike Hopkins. The technology has been proven in the field and should overtake batteries because it better suited to large loads over longer periods of time, he said. A housing development in Canada is testing a system to store thermal energy underground in the summer to be released during the freezing Alberta winters. Companies such as Ice Energy and Calmac use power to precool an insulated vat of liquid that reduces peak load.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Governors Rally Around Health Law Fixes as White House Pushes Repeal
 WASHINGTON — Governors from both political parties told Congress on Thursday that they supported immediate action on modest, bipartisan steps to repair the Affordable Care Act without repealing it, even as the Trump administration continued to encourage efforts to dismantle the law.

Testifying at a hearing of the Senate health committee, governors from Colorado, Massachusetts, Montana, Tennessee and Utah endorsed proposals to stabilize health insurance markets by providing federal money for continued payment of subsidies to insurance companies to offset the cost of discounts provided to low-income people.

They also urged Congress to give states more latitude to modify some insurance requirements in the Affordable Care Act and to devise their own coverage programs. The subsidy money and the flexibility for states are the two main components of a bipartisan consensus emerging in the Senate.

“Congress should take steps now to prevent the total collapse of the health insurance market” by providing money for the “cost-sharing” subsidies, said Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee, a Republican.

Output: Governors from both political parties told Congress on Thursday that they supported immediate action on modest, bipartisan steps to repair the Affordable Care Act without repealing it, even as the Trump administration continued to encourage efforts to dismantle the law.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Advancing Connected Health for Seniors
 CARE DELIVERY REDESIGN

What is the future of how and where we engage consumers in their health and care?

Output: John Mattison of Kaiser Permanente and Tim Lash, Successful Aging, West Health share their insights and challenges to connect with seniors, address their complex needs and to ultimately achieve better outcomes through more connected health.  Hear from a provider leader and a foundation executive who pioneer connected health solutions assess emerging innovation opportunities for the senior market.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
What Older Americans Stand to Lose if ‘Dreamers’ Are Deported
 Those executives may have empathy for the beneficiaries of the program, known as Dreamers, as well as a broader interest in more liberal immigration policies to satisfy their labor needs. But the practical effect on their businesses will typically be minimal. The number of workers who benefit from the program is tiny alongside a national labor force of more than 150 million, and the DACA workers are spread out relatively evenly across most industries.

In health care, on the other hand, the economic impact could be significant, depriving patients of help they depend on and driving up costs for families and taxpayers.

Surveys of DACA beneficiaries reveal that roughly one-fifth of them work in the health care and educational sector, suggesting a potential loss of tens of thousands of workers from in-demand job categories like home health aide and nursing assistant.

At the same time, projections by the government and advocacy groups show that the economy will need to add hundreds of thousands of workers in these fields over the next five to 10 years simply to keep up with escalating demand, caused primarily by a rapidly aging population.

“It’s going to have a real impact on consumers,” Paul Osterman, a professor at the Sloan School at MIT and author of a new book on long-term care workers, said of the DACA move.

Output: When the Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would end an Obama-era program that shielded young undocumented immigrants from deportation, Sherwin Sheik quickly sized up the potential toll on his business.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Shedding New Light On Hospice Care: No Need To Wait For The ‘Brink Of Death’
 A few weeks ago, Kathy Brandt’s 86-year-old mother was hospitalized in Florida after a fall. After rushing to her side, Brandt asked for a consult with a palliative care nurse.

“I wanted someone to make sure my mother was on the right medications,” Brandt said.

For all her expertise — Brandt advises end-of-life organizations across the country — she was taken aback when the nurse suggested hospice care for her mother, who has advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, kidney disease and a rapid, irregular heartbeat.

“I was like — really?” Brandt remembered saying, struggling with shock.

It’s a common reaction. Although hospices now serve more than 1.4 million people a year, this specialized type of care, meant for people with six months or less to live, continues to evoke resistance, fear and misunderstanding.

“The biggest misperception about hospice is that it’s ‘brink-of-death care,’” said Patricia Mehnert, a longtime hospice nurse and interim chief executive officer of TRU Community Care, the first hospice in Colorado.

NAVIGATING AGING Navigating Aging focuses on medical issues and advice associated with aging and end-of-life care, helping America’s 45 million seniors and their families navigate the health care system. To contact Judith with a question or comment, click here. For more KHN coverage of aging, click here.

In fact, hospice care often makes a considerable difference for those with months to live. “When someone is further out from death, we can really focus on enhancing their quality of life,” said Rachel Behrendt, senior vice president of Hospice of the Valley, which serves the Phoenix metropolitan area.

New research confirms that hospice patients report better pain control, more satisfaction with their care and fewer deaths in the hospital or intensive care units than other people with similarly short life expectancies.

What should seniors and their families, the largest users of hospice care, expect? It’s fairly well understood that patients forgo curative therapies in favor of comfort care when they enter hospice. Here are additional features:

Four Levels Of Care

Hospice providers are required to offer routine care in patients’ homes (this includes seniors who reside in assisted living or nursing homes); continuous care at home for people with out-of-control symptoms such as pain or breathing problems; inpatient respite for families that need a break from caring for a loved one; and general inpatient care for medical crises that can’t be handled in any other setting.

With continuous care, a nurse must be on-site in the home for at least eight hours a day, helping to bring symptoms under control. Usually, this will happen in one to three days. Respite care has a maximum limit of five days.

Some hospices have their own general inpatient facilities and “it’s a common misconception that patients are sent to inpatient hospice to die,” said Jean Cohn, clinical manager at Montgomery Hospice’s inpatient facility, Casey House. “In fact, we’re frequently fine-tuning patients’ regimens in inpatient hospice and sending them back home.”

Intermittent Care At Home

Routine care at home is by far the most common service, accounting for about 94 percent of hospice care, according to the latest report from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

While services vary depending on a patient’s needs, home care typically involves at least one weekly visit from a nurse and a couple of visits from aides for up to 90 minutes. Also, a volunteer may visit, if a patient and family so choose, and social workers and chaplains are available to address practical and spiritual concerns.

Hospices will provide all medications needed to address the underlying illness that is expected to cause the patient’s death, as well as medical equipment such as hospital beds, commodes, wheelchairs, walkers and oxygen. Typically, there is no charge for such gear, although a copay of up to $5 per prescription is allowed.

What families and patients often don’t realize: Hospice staff will not be in the home every day, around the clock. “Many people think that hospice will be there all the time, but it doesn’t work that way,” Brandt said. “The family is still the front line for providing day-to-day care.”

In assisted living, patients or their families may have to hire nursing assistants or companions to provide supplemental care, since hands-on help is limited. In nursing homes, aides may visit less often, since more hands-on help is available on-site.

Self-Referrals Are Allowed

Anyone can ask for a consultation with a hospice. “We get many self-referrals, as well as referrals from family and friends,” said Behrendt of Hospice of the Valley. Usually, a nurse will go out and do a preliminary assessment to determine if a person would qualify for hospice services.

To be admitted, two physicians — the patient’s primary care physician and the hospice physician — need to certify that the person’s life expectancy is six months or less, based on the anticipated trajectory of the patient’s underlying illness. And recertification will be required at regular intervals.

You Choose Your Physician

You have a right to keep your primary care physician or you can choose to have a hospice physician be in charge of your medical care.

At JourneyCare, the largest hospice in Illinois, “we prefer that the patient keeps their primary care physician because that physician knows them best,” said Dr. Mark Grzeskowiak, vice president of medical services.

These arrangements require close collaboration. For instance, if a nurse observes that a patient with heart failure is experiencing increased shortness of breath, JourneyCare staff will get in touch with that patient’s primary care physician. The physician is responsible for altering the treatment plan; the hospice is responsible for implementing that plan and giving clear instructions to the patient and family.

Concerns About Medications

“There’s a misconception that you’re going to be medicated to a highly sedated state in hospice,” said Dr. Christopher Kerr, chief executive officer and chief medical officer for Hospice Buffalo Inc. in upstate New York. “The reality is our primary goal is to increase quality wakefulness. Managing these medications is an art and we’re good at it.”

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Family caregivers are on the front line since they’re responsible for administering pain medications such as morphine. “Absolutely, there’s a great deal of fear and anxiety around all the issues associated with giving medications,” said Cohn of Montgomery Hospice. “We try to reassure caregivers that the doses we start with are very small and we’ll see how the patient reacts and go slowly and deliberately from there.”

Because most hospice stays are short — the median length is only 17 days — and because the diversion of painkillers from people’s homes is a risk, doctors have begun writing prescriptions for a week or two at a time, said Judi Lund Person, vice president of regulatory and compliance for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. If concerns exist, hospices can have a lockbox for medications sent to the home.

Discharges Are Possible

Estimating when someone is going to die is an art, not a science, and each year hundreds of thousands of hospice patients end up living longer than doctors anticipated.

If physicians can document continued decline in these patients — for instance, worsening pain or a noticeable advance in their underlying illness — they might be able to recertify them for ongoing hospice care. But if the patient is considered stable, they’ll be discharged, various experts said.

In 2015, nearly 17 percent of hospice patients were so-called live discharges, according to a report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Two days before a discharge, hospices are required to give the patient or family members a Notice of Medicare Non-Coverage. Expedited appeals of discharge decisions can be lodged with a Medicare quality improvement organization.

There are no regulatory requirements governing what hospices should do to facilitate live discharges. Some hospices will spend weeks helping patients make arrangements to receive medications, medical equipment and ongoing care from other sources. Others offer minimal help.

At The Very End

Almost 1 in 8 hospice patients don’t get visits from professional staff during their last two days of life, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine last year. And this can leave families without needed support.

Some hospices have responded by creating programs specifically for people who have a very short time left to live. “We’ve put together a special team for people who are expected to live 10 days or less because that requires a different kind of management,” said Ann Mitchell, chief executive officer of Montgomery Hospice. “Instead of a nurse for every 15 patients, a nurse on this team will have five to six patients and a social worker is available seven days a week.”

“One-third of our patients are here for less than seven days and often we get them in a crisis,” said Kerr of Hospice Buffalo. “We’ve had to repurpose our services to address the urgency and complexity of these patients’ needs and that means we have to be ever more present.” Across the board, Hospice Buffalo requires that patients be seen within 24 hours of an expected death.

We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit kffhealthnews.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.

KHN’s coverage related to aging & improving care of older adults is supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation and coverage of end-of-life and serious illness issues is supported by The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

KFF Health News' coverage of aging and long-term care issues is supported in part by The SCAN Foundation.

Output: A few weeks ago, Kathy Brandt’s 86-year-old mother was hospitalized in Florida after a fall. After rushing to her side, Brandt asked for a consult with a palliative care nurse.