Well, we seem to say it at the end of every year, but 2017 seemed a lot busier than 2016, 2016 was busier and more exciting than the year before that, and so on! There have been some hints already on what the industry and its observers expect to see in 2018 and we do not doubt energy storage will continue in its rise to become a flexible cornerstone of the world’s electricity infrastructure. In the meantime, let’s reflect on the top news stories of last year, as reported by Energy-Storage.News and based on readership statistics from you:

While acknowledging that the economics “vary significantly” by region and application, Navigant Research has forecast that energy storage for integration of renewables and co-located with solar or wind could be worth more than US$20 billion by 2026.

With the release of the most recent Capacity Market pre-qualification register, the UK’s utility-scale battery storage pipeline has now reached nearly 8GW. Solar Media market research analyst Lauren Cook takes a deep dive into the projects that made it through pre-qualification, and what these results mean for the projects likely to get built in 2018.

Since the launch of the site almost four years ago, Energy-Storage.News (and PV Tech Storage as it was previously known), has consistently brought you high-quality blogs from both guest contributors and our team of journalists and experts here at Solar Media. Here’s just a selection of some of the best guest blogs we ran from January to June, 2017:

The digital ledger system blockchain has been both praised and misunderstood in equal measure and its relationship to the physical world of electrons is at its earliest stages of exploration. In the latest ‘Storage & Smart Power’ section of PV Tech Power, Carsten Reincke-Collon, CTO of Younicos looks at how energy storage and management software will interact with blockchain-led or blockchain-like systems of data processing and recording.

The CEO of Primus Power agrees that at present, lithium battery systems are more bankable than the flow battery energy storage systems of the type his company makes, but asserted that he believes this will change over time.

Plans are in place for a combined 160MW solar and wind project with up to 40MWh of energy storage in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, while a smaller scale demonstration project experimenting with multiple technologies is being developed for Kerala.

Massachusetts, one of the few US states thus far to put consideration of energy storage into long-term planning decisions for electric utilities, will support 26 projects with US$20 million in grants.

Changes to the de-rating factors for battery storage projects competing in the UK’s Capacity Market (CM) will push the sector towards longer-duration batteries, while potentially sparking a shift towards energy arbitrage as a source of revenue for shorter duration applications. David Pratt heard from several industry sources following last week’s announcement.

Construction on Australia’s first utility-scale wind, solar and energy storage hybrid project to be connected to the national grid is about to start near Hughenden in northwest Queensland.