The US Had a Big Battery Boom Last Year

The US added a record-breaking magnitude of vigor retention successful 2025, according to a caller star manufacture study published Monday. The maturation of artillery retention crossed the US is simply a uncommon occurrence communicative for cleanable vigor during the renewables-hostile 2nd Trump administration—and besides a motion of however utilities whitethorn beryllium reasoning astir reorienting electrical grids arsenic request goes up crossed the country.

The caller report, issued by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), follows different dataset released past week by Bloomberg New Energy Finance showing a akin roar successful artillery growth. In 2025, according to the SEIA report, the US installed 57 gigawatt hours of caller vigor retention to the grid, with caller installations increasing astir 30 percent implicit the twelvemonth before. (As its sanction suggests, a gigawatt hr is simply a measurement of vigor stored implicit time.) That’s capable storage, the SEIA study claims, to powerfulness much than 5 cardinal homes each year.

The study predicts that the marketplace could leap different 21 percent by the extremity of this year, expanding by an further 70 gigawatt hours successful 2026 alone. These are monster numbers compared to little than a decennary ago, erstwhile determination was astir fractional a gigawatt of retention connected the grid successful total.

Batteries person proven remarkably politically resilient. Tax credits for upwind and star were chopped arsenic portion of the One Big Beautiful Bill past summertime amid a large-scale onslaught connected renewables from the administration, contempt absorption from Republican lawmakers with cleanable vigor projects successful their states. But artillery taxation credits were mostly spared.

And contempt Washington’s hostility toward renewable energy, batteries—along with solar—saw important maturation successful immoderate heavy reddish states past year. One of the large renewable vigor occurrence stories of the infinitesimal is Texas, wherever star met much than 15 percent of request passim the summer, beating retired ember for the archetypal time. The SEIA study predicts that Texas volition overtake California this twelvemonth to go the US authorities with the astir gigawatt hours of retention deployed.

Jigar Shah, a managing spouse astatine the advisory steadfast Multiplier and the erstwhile manager of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, points retired that Texas’s autarkic and mostly deregulated powerfulness grid—which operates overmuch person to a existent free-market strategy than different grids successful the country—has enabled star and batteries to soar up of different options contempt absorption successful the White House. (Solar’s occurrence communicative is truthful large that it does adjacent look to beryllium reaching immoderate voices connected the right: Recent polling suggests that MAGA voters enactment solar, portion Katie Miller, the influential erstwhile apical communications authoritative for the alleged Department of Government Efficiency to whom White House lawman main of unit Stephen Miller is married,, has been tweeting approvingly astir star vigor successful caller weeks.)

“Texas fundamentally says: ‘I don't attraction astir your taste bias,’” Shah, who was not progressive successful the SEIA report, says. “‘These are the marketplace signals. You guys bash what you privation to do. If you privation to physique caller ember plants, great. If you privation to physique batteries, great.’ And it happened to beryllium that batteries were astir incentivized by their fiscal incentives.”

While batteries and star are proving a slayer operation successful places similar Texas, the bulk of artillery installations past year, the SEIA study found, were standalone ones not connected to circumstantial star projects. The maturation of standalone retention is simply a bully motion for grids that are progressively stressed by skyrocketing demand.

On an mean day, vigor grids astir the US usage lone astir 50 percent of the vigor disposable to them. This underutilization is by design; the grid needs a ample magnitude of capableness for days erstwhile request is astatine its peak. Installing batteries astatine each levels of the grid is 1 mode to instrumentality vantage of the other vigor that’s not utilized during off-peak days truthful that it doesn’t spell to waste.