Electric batteries break another record in the US, though the residential segment slows

Battery energy storage hit another milestone in the United States: during the second quarter of 2026, 20.2 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of new capacity came online, the highest figure recorded to date, according to a report prepared by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). That amount of energy is equivalent to covering the daily electricity needs of some 700,000 homes. At this pace, the country is on track to install 71 GWh of batteries over the course of 2026, 20% more than the previous year.

The growth reflects a combination of factors: batteries have become cheaper and, at the same time, there is an urgent need for more storage capacity as renewable sources such as solar and onshore wind are added to the grid, since their generation is intermittent and requires systems that can store surplus energy for use when it is needed.

The driving force behind this record quarter was large utility-scale systems, which accounted for most of the new capacity. Specifically, seven "gigascale" installations (each with more than one gigawatt-hour of capacity) came online in just three months. Shan Tomouk, head of energy storage at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, sums it up this way: "It really came down to a handful of large projects."

But not all the growth came from large plants. The behind-the-meter battery category also grew, covering both residential and industrial/commercial installations, typically smaller and owned by individuals or businesses rather than by the utilities themselves. Within this segment, data centers were the main driver, accounting for around three quarters of the new batteries installed in the commercial sector, against a backdrop of electricity demand soaring due to the boom in these facilities.

Residential batteries, by contrast —those installed in homes to store energy from solar panels or serve as backup during outages— experienced a sharp slowdown. The report projects a 16% drop in home installations during 2026 compared with the previous year. According to Tomouk, the main cause is the elimination in 2025 of a tax credit that subsidized these home battery systems. Even so, he expects residential installations to recover toward the end of the decade. Unlike what happened with the home segment, tax incentives for non-residential batteries have largely remained in place.

Overall, the battery storage sector is shaping up as one of the bright spots of the US energy industry right now. Isshu Kikuma, an energy storage analyst at the consultancy BloombergNEF, describes it as "one of the strong sectors in the United States."

Looking ahead, a key trend to watch is the shift toward technology manufactured on US soil. Currently, almost all systems coming online use cells manufactured in China, although in some cases the final assembly into complete storage systems takes place in the US. Tariffs had already been pushing the industry toward domestic production, and starting this year tax credits for energy storage require projects to limit their reliance on batteries imported from China. There is already substantial manufacturing capacity under construction within the country, but, according to Tomouk, those factories are unlikely to be able to meet all demand before roughly 2030, which could translate into price increases in the meantime.