Chart: US is set to shatter grid battery records this year

See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the week” column.

Last year was fantastic for battery storage. This year is poised to be even better.

The U.S. is set to plug over 18 gigawatts of new utility-scale energy storage capacity into the grid in 2025, up from 2024’s record-setting total of almost 11 GW, per Energy Information Administration data analyzed by Cleanview. Should that expectation bear out, the U.S. will have installed more grid batteries this year alone than it had installed altogether as of 2023.

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The U.S. grid battery sector has been on a tear in recent years — and California and Texas are the reasons why. Combined, the two states have installed nearly three-quarters of the country’s total energy storage capacity of over 26 GW.

California has long held the top spot on large-scale battery storage installations. Even last year, when the EIA forecast that Texas would claim the lead, California held on by a few hundred megawatts. This year EIA again expects Texas to outpace California, only now by an even wider margin than last year. The Lone Star State could build nearly 7 GW of utility-scale storage in 2025 compared to California’s 4.2 GW.

But the new state-level storyline to watch is the rise of Arizona. The state built just under 1 GW of storage in 2024, buoyed by massive new projects like the Sonoran Solar Energy Center and the Eleven Mile Solar Center that pair solar with batteries to soak up as much desert sun as possible. This year, EIA says Arizona is on track to nearly quadruple last year’s total and build 3.6 GW of storage.

It’s worth noting that EIA’s 2024 storage forecast overshot actual installations by about 3 GW — and developers didn’t have the Trump administration to contend with then. President Donald Trump has not outright targeted energy storage, but the uncertainty surrounding the future of clean energy tax credits could have a chilling effect on investment, as it has had on projects in adjacent sectors like solar and battery manufacturing.

Despite the political chaos, developers are barrelling ahead. Just over 12 GW of storage projects are either under construction or complete and waiting to plug into the grid. And, as Cleanview points out, the crucial tax credit for battery storage projects is already locked into the tax code for 2025, giving developers some measure of certainty — at least for the months ahead.

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