The U.S. is adding grid-scale battery storage at a record pace as utilities work to balance renewable energy and rising electricity demand, including from energy-intensive data centers. These batteries store excess solar and wind power and release it when needed, making them a critical piece of a more flexible grid.
What’s changing is where the batteries are coming from. For years, the U.S. depended heavily on imported components, especially from Asia. Now, domestic manufacturing is expanding quickly, supported by incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. New factories are not only assembling battery systems but also beginning to produce battery cells, a key and more complex part of the supply chain.
This shift is starting to localize more of the value and reduce reliance on global logistics. At the same time, battery storage is becoming a major contributor to new power capacity additions across the country, particularly in states investing heavily in renewables.
Even with this growth, challenges remain around supply chains, permitting, and scaling production. However, the direction is clear: more batteries are being built, and more of them are being made closer to where they are used.
Batteries will account for some 28 percent of new U.S. power plant capacity built this year. For the first time, the country will be able to produce enough grid batteries to meet that surging demand on its own, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Storage Coalition
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