The US added a record-breaking quantity of vitality storage in 2025, in line with a brand new photo voltaic business report revealed Monday. The expansion of battery storage throughout the US is a uncommon success story for clear vitality in the course of the renewables-hostile second Trump administration—and likewise an indication of how utilities could also be eager about reorienting electrical grids as demand goes up throughout the nation.
The brand new report, issued by the Photo voltaic Vitality Industries Affiliation (SEIA), follows one other dataset launched final week by Bloomberg New Vitality Finance displaying an analogous growth in battery development. In 2025, in line with the SEIA report, the US put in 57 gigawatt hours of recent vitality storage to the grid, with new installations rising nearly 30 p.c over the 12 months earlier than. (As its identify suggests, a gigawatt hour is a measure of vitality saved over time.) That’s sufficient storage, the SEIA report claims, to energy greater than 5 million houses annually.
The report predicts that the market may soar one other 21 p.c by the tip of this 12 months, growing by a further 70 gigawatt hours in 2026 alone. These are monster numbers in comparison with lower than a decade in the past, when there was about half a gigawatt of storage on the grid in whole.
Batteries have confirmed remarkably politically resilient. Tax credit for wind and photo voltaic have been lower as a part of the One Huge Lovely Invoice final summer time amid a large-scale assault on renewables from the administration, regardless of opposition from Republican lawmakers with clean-energy initiatives of their states. However battery tax credit have been largely spared.
And regardless of Washington’s hostility towards renewable vitality, batteries—together with photo voltaic—noticed important development in some deep purple states final 12 months. One of many massive renewable vitality success tales of the second is Texas, the place photo voltaic met greater than 15 p.c of demand all through the summer time, beating out coal for the primary time. The SEIA report predicts that Texas will overtake California this 12 months to grow to be the US state with probably the most gigawatt hours of storage deployed.
Jigar Shah, a managing companion on the advisory agency Multiplier and the previous director of the Division of Vitality’s Mortgage Packages Workplace, factors out that Texas’ impartial and largely deregulated energy grid—which operates a lot nearer to a real free-market system than different grids within the nation—has enabled photo voltaic and batteries to soar forward of different choices regardless of resistance within the White Home. (Photo voltaic’s success story is so massive that it does even appear to be reaching some voices on the proper: Latest polling means that MAGA voters assist photo voltaic, whereas Katie Miller, the influential former high communications official for the so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity to whom White Home deputy chief of employees Stephen Miller is married, has been tweeting approvingly about photo voltaic vitality in current weeks.)
“Texas principally says, ‘I do not care about your cultural bias,’” says Shah, who was not concerned within the SEIA report. “‘These are the market alerts. You guys do what you need to do. If you wish to construct new coal vegetation, nice. If you wish to construct batteries, nice.’ And it occurred to be that batteries have been most incentivized by their monetary incentives.”
Whereas batteries and photo voltaic are proving a killer mixture in locations like Texas, the vast majority of battery installations final 12 months, the SEIA report discovered, have been stand-alone ones not related to particular photo voltaic initiatives. The expansion of stand-alone storage is an effective signal for grids which might be more and more burdened by skyrocketing demand.
On a mean day, vitality grids across the US use solely about 50 p.c of the vitality out there to them. This underutilization is by design; the grid wants a considerable amount of capability for days when demand is at its peak. Putting in batteries in any respect ranges of the grid is one strategy to benefit from the additional vitality that’s not used throughout off-peak days in order that it doesn’t go to waste.
