Which states have the most grid batteries?

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

California and Texas are far ahead of the pack when it comes to grid batteries. But another state is seeing storage expand quickly as it looks to store more of its abundant, cheap solar power for later.

Arizona saw blistering growth in utility-scale battery capacity last year, more than doubling its fleet to a total of 4.7 gigawatts at the end of 2025, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data analyzed by research firm Cleanview.

The two leading states each installed far more capacity last year than Arizona did, but neither of these more mature markets grew as quickly. California expanded its fleet by 29%, to 15.2 GW, while Texas’ grew by 69%, pushing it to just over 14 GW of total installed capacity.

Batteries continue to fall in price and are among the fastest ways to add capacity to the grid. At a time when demand for electricity is skyrocketing, threatening to push already elevated utility bills even higher, cost and speed are critical factors. The Republican budget bill passed last summer notably let batteries hang on to their generous tax incentives while sunsetting the same credits for solar and wind.

Still, the technology is relatively new to the grid — even if it’s just a supersize version of the batteries in your phone and computer. Less than a decade ago, hardly any batteries were plugged into the grid, but a combination of those falling costs, surging solar, clean energy targets, and tweaks to energy market designs have opened the floodgates in certain regions.

It makes sense that Arizona is now third on the battery leaderboard.

For one, it has lots of solar power. It’s fourth in the nation in utility-scale solar, after Texas, California, and Florida. Energy storage is most potent when used to soak up dirt-cheap, excess solar — something states like Arizona have in spades, especially on afternoons when power demand is low but the sun is shining.

Meanwhile, Arizona is staring down a bigger increase in electricity demand than ​“almost anywhere in the country,” writes Cleanview founder Michael Thomas. Arizona is not only a hot spot for the data center boom but also the site of a massive, energy-hungry chip-manufacturing hub being built by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Put simply, Arizona needs to build a lot more energy capacity, fast — and batteries are a cheap and easy way to do it.

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