Momentum continues to build for big battery power plants in the US following another record year in 2025, in which the technology repeated its position as the country’s second-largest source of new capacity after solar.
US utilities and independent developers added 17.75 gigawatts of large-scale battery power storage capacity last year, 52% more than the previous record in 2024, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. Companies completed nearly 6 GW in the fourth quarter alone, marking a new quarterly high and pushing cumulative non-hydroelectric storage capacity to roughly 48 GW — almost all of which was built this decade.
The data underscores the rapid ascent of lithium-ion battery systems, most of which are designed to store energy for up to four hours from colocated solar farms or renewables-rich grids to help meet rising US peak power demand.
“I’ve never seen an industry move so fast,” said Chris Taylor, CEO of Portland, Oregon-based developer GridStor LLC, which is backed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management LP. “I don’t know if there’s ever been a technology in the history of mankind for energy that’s been deployed at such a massive scale in such a short period of time.”
The industry easily surpassed its target of adding 35 GW by 2025, a seemingly ambitious goal set in 2017 when the US had less than 1 GW of battery storage in operation. Since 2020, battery storage capacity has skyrocketed, overtaking cumulative pumped hydroelectric storage in 2024 and topping annual natural gas-fired capacity additions in each of the past two years.
Backed by long-term federal tax credits, an improving supply chain and surging demand from hyperscale technology giants, Taylor and many of his peers believe battery storage has only just begun to hit its stride as critical infrastructure to facilitate data centers, electric vehicles, factories and other sources of escalating power demand.
“From now to 2030 is going to be a boom time for our sector, because if you have well-positioned assets, you can quickly use those to support data center growth, and I see that as becoming a huge driver,” Taylor told Platts, part of S&P Global Energy.
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