U.S. Battery Storage Capacity Will More Than Triple by 2025

According to the estimates of the latest Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), power plant owners and developers are planning to increase utility-scale battery storage capacity in the United States to around 30 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2025. This means that the U.S. battery storage capacity will triple in the next few years.

EIA collects information from developers and power plant owners regarding their operating and planned capacity additions, including battery storage, through their electric generator surveys. In the year 2020, battery storage capacity started growing rapidly in the United States, and by October 2022, operating utility-scale battery storage had reached 7.8 GW. Developers and power plant operators expect this number to increase by 1.4 gigawatts by the end of 2022, and from 2023 to the year 2025, they plan to add another 20.8 GW of battery storage capacity.

What is Battery Storage and How Does it Help?

According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) battery storage is a technology that facilitates utilities and power system operators to store energy for later use. An electrochemical device that collects or charges energy from the power plant or a grid, and then discharges that energy to provide electricity or other grid services, at a later time, is called a battery energy storage system (BESS).

Battery storage has a number of benefits. Some important ones are:

1. Renewable Generators: Batteries provide services for solar and wind generators like renewable curtailment, and renewable capacity firming.
2. System Operations: Batteries provide services for system operations like frequency regulation and flexible ramping.
3. Investment Deferral: Batteries defer investments in peak generation and grid reinforcements. They provide transmission and distribution congestion relief.
4. Battery storage increases flexibility in power systems. It capacitates optimal use of variable electricity sources like solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind energy. Solar and wind can provide electricity only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing – batteries store extra energy produced by the solar generators and the wind for later use.

What is being planned?
According to the EIA, with the increase in battery capacity to the U.S. grid, more and more battery projects are becoming larger in capacity. Over 23 large-scale battery projects that are between 250 MW and 650 MW have been slated for deployment in 2025.

Over 75% of the 20.8 GW of utility-scale battery capacity planned for installation by owners and operators between 2022 and 2025 are located in Texas and California. The most utility-scale solar capacity of 16.8 GW is based in California, which is more than any other state. Developers and power plant operators plan to add another 7.7 GW between 2023 and 2025. In Texas, solar capacity of 10.5 GW already exists and developers expect to install another 20.4 GW between 2023 and 2025. Also, 37.2 GW of wind capacity already exists in Texas, which is greater than any other state; and developers plan to add another 5.3 GW by 2025.