Around 4.9GW/14.6GWh of large-scale BESS came online in May, with a much more balanced regional breakdown than usual.
China was the single-largest region with 1,261MW/5,372MWh of large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity going into operation, 37% of the global total of 4,949MW/14,593MW.
That’s according to the latest monthly dataset from research firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, published as part of our regular series for ESN Premium.
However, that 37% figure is the lowest since we started regularly publishing the data 18 months ago. Typically China accounts for 50-80% of the monthly figures. Asia excluding China, Europe, North America and South & Central America all had had strong months in May.
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The monthly figure for May was actually a year-on-year fall of 32%, but that reflects a strong month in May 2025. And, the deployments in the first five months of 2026 have reached 86.3GWh, up 24% year-on-year.
The figures are in the table below. Asia excluding China saw 1,261MW/3571MWh come online.
A big chunk of that was the Khavda BESS Phase 2, a 667MW/1,994MWh project in India put into operation by the conglomerate Adani Group. But there were also sizeable projects completed by Meralco PowerGen Corp in the Philippines and TNB in Malaysia.
Large-scale BESS deployments in May 2026
| Region | MW | MWh |
| Africa | 0 | 0 |
| Asia (ex-China) | 1,261 | 3,571 |
| China | 2,031 | 5,372 |
| Europe | 773 | 2,031 |
| Middle East | 35 | 70 |
| North America | 399 | 1,316 |
| Oceania | 150 | 736 |
| South & Central America | 300 | 1,497 |
| Total | 4949 | 14593 |
Europe meanwhile saw 773MW/2,031MWh enter operations, 399MW/1,316MWh did so in North America and 300MW/1,497MWh went online in South & Central America (plus smaller deployments in all other regions, except Africa).
Some highlights of the European activity include the largest projects in France and Spain being completed by TagEnergy and Iberdrola respectively. In Poland, EDF completed a 120MWh system while in Germany Green Flexibility inaugurated a 40MW/80MWh project.
Chile continues to have a fantastic 2026 for deployments. In May, ContourGlobal brought online a 231MW solar, 1.3GWh BESS project in the Tarapacá region. June’s figures will be even stronger, with Grenergy inaugurating a project with a staggering 3.5GWh BESS. Both projects are various phases of a larger collection of projects called the Oasis de Atacama developed by Grenergy, which it is building, and sometimes selling, in phases.
Non-lithium projects in China
China is a world leader in energy storage, both in terms of the scale of lithium-ion BESS projects deployed but also in bringing new storage technologies to scale.
Rho Motion said that last month saw three flow battery projects come online there, totalling 30MW/134MWh combined.
Flow batteries appear to have finally taken off outside of the country, with a data centre operator in Switzerland recently enlisting supplier Invinity Energy Systems as design partner for a gigawatt-scale flow battery. A supply deal will hopefully follow the design and engineering phase, the Invinity team said in an interview with us shortly after.
Meanwhile, two sodium-ion projects entered the project pipeline in China, both 20MW/40MWh each. Sodium-ion also appears to have turned a corner, marked by CATL and HyperStrong’s 60GWh co-operation agreement last month.
