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:

Start-up Romeo Power has opened a lithium battery pack factory in Los Angeles, aimed at the EV and stationary energy storage markets, aiming to ramp up to 4GWh production capacity by next year.

Intended to “kick start concrete projects”, the European Commission is set to allocate a further €200 million (US$235.53 million) towards supporting the scale-up of lithium battery manufacturing on the continent.

Australian redox flow energy storage maker Redflow says a Thai factory set to start producing its batteries could be producing 30Wh annually when it becomes fully operational.

Automation and engineering group ABB has signed on to become a supplier to a planned European lithium-ion battery ‘Gigafactory’ for Swedish start-up Northvolt.

India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) is debating how and whether to introduce a mandate for solar and wind projects above a certain size to be coupled with energy storage.

The secretary of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) Anand Kumar has stressed the importance of energy storage to the overall renewables sector and invited industry to come and set up battery manufacturing in India.

TerraE Holding, a collaborative initiative to establish large-scale production line manufacturing of lithium-ion cells at a European ‘Gigafactory’, has signed a raw materials deal for anode materials with Australia’s Magnis Resources.

Kodak, the tech company best known for producing photographic film and imaging equipment, has inaugurated the Kodak Cell Assembly Center, a new facility aimed at accelerating development and scale-up of advanced batteries for energy storage.

An EV and stationary energy storage battery start-up headed by former SpaceX, Tesla, Apple, Amazon and Samsung designers and engineers has mobilised almost US$100 million of financing and contracts to kickstart manufacturing operations.