Anybody knows when the new NFPA 70E-2017 will be released and available to purchase?

It will be NFPA 70E-2018 version not 2017 and typically I believe it becomes available in Sept.

Due to NFPA rules most NFPA standards are updated/released on a somewhat "hard" schedule every 3 years. So if we have 70E-2015, the next version will be 70E-2018, which as mentioned typically gets released around September or October of the year before so next month. This means that for instance NEC (NFPA 70) is updated the year before NFPA 70E so the latest update is 2017 and the next one will be 2020.

In contrast with just one exception that I'm aware of, IEEE standards get done whenever they get done, and that can be a very long time. For instance outside of a few minor updates the current version of IEEE 1584 is 2002.. It will get updated some time soon, maybe even within the next year or two. In contrast 70E has been updated 4 times so far (it previously had a 4 year rotation instead of 3). The only exception I know of with IEEE is NESC (IEEE/ANSI C2) which is on either a 5 or 6 year cycle so it is both slower and slightly "out of sync" with NFPA. I believe there are also a few NFPA standards that are relatively small and relatively mature and get much slower update cycles.

In my own home state of North Carolina the state legislature has ordered the Code board to slow down the adoption rate to only once every 6 years for cost reasons for the NEC (NFPA 70). I won't even get into the politics of it where the Board promptly tried to hold us to I think the 2011 version until 2019 which would have almost tied us with 4 other states for last place. Not to be outdone, the federal government in the form of MSHA has partially adopted NEC 1976 edition. This has been frozen for decades and I don't even know where you can find the key section.

NFPA stated 70E PDF will be available on 9/25/17

Here is the link to place order and know the available dates for PDF, standard softbound and Handbook:
http://catalog.nfpa.org/2015-NFPA-70E-S ... y8EALw_wcB

Has anyone heard what is behind the delays on making the NFPA70E 2018 PDF available? I ordered mine on August 4th 2017 and the date has changed 4 times. I was given 3 dates in August, the last being the 23rd. Then the date was changed to September 25th. Now it's delayed again to 10-20.
Are the changes more extensive than what appeared in the second draft or the information on the changes that is all ready for sale?

NFPA informed me that the NFPA 70E 2018 standard PDF is available for download & I just got mine. The standard softbound and handbook may take another month. Here is the link for updates:
http://catalog.nfpa.org/2015-NFPA-70E-S ... 80QAvD_BwE