UK-headquartered distributed energy services provider Kiwi Power has made its first official expansion into the US, operating in the ERCOT market of Texas and planning a further step into the PJM Interconnection service area.

GE Renewable Energy, an arm of the US engineering giant, will supply 100MWh of battery energy storage systems (BESS) to three projects being developed by Convergent Energy + Power in California.

Convergent Energy + Power, a US-Canadian project developer which has attracted investment from the venture capital arm of Statoil, has acquired 40MW of flywheel energy storage already in operation in grid-balancing markets in New York State and Pennsylvania.

News in brief from around the world of energy storage.

New Jersey is the latest US state to set itself targets for the deployment of energy storage, with newly passed legislation calling for 600MW of the technology within three years.

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:

Energy storage companies “have suffered significant and detrimental harm” from changes to rules governing the frequency regulation market in US regional transmission organisation (RTO) PJM Interconnection’s service area, the Energy Storage Association has said.

Swiss Green Electricity Management Group (SGEM), an investor in energy storage projects, has announced a 20MW / 10MWh battery storage system for PJM Interconnection’s frequency regulation market, to be supplied and built by Leclanché.

Deploying battery storage at grid level is relatively uncharted territory, but a number of pioneers’ projects are now in the ground. Patrick Leslie and colleagues at RES, which built some of the first wave of storage projects, teases out the key technology, finance and regulatory lessons the industry can learn from these early experiences.