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China leads 29% October global BESS deployments increase

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Nearly 70% of the 4.5GW/12.7GWh of grid-scale BESS that came online across the globe last month was in China.

The global figure is a 29% increase year-on-year, and the data comes from market intelligence firm Rho Motion’s Battery Energy Stationary Storage Monthly Database, which the previous month reported a 19% fall in deployments owing to a quiet month in China.

Cumulative deployments in the first ten months of the year have now reached 156GWh, up 39% year-on-year.

One of the projects which contributed to China’s new installations in October totalling 2,988MW/8,786MWh, was a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) project, the latest of several large-scale projects to have been commissioned.

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The pipeline that Rho Motion tracks grew to 2.4TWh of BESS capacity, with new additions to that pipeline in October reaching 53GWh. The largest of these was the Yan’an Wenergy Electricity Shaanbei-Anhui HVDC Project in China, at 4.2GWh.

The quantity of projects that had technology providers assigned in October was 16GWh, while 32GWh entered construction, including Masdar’s huge round-the-clock renewables plant in the UAE which has 19GWh BESS capacity.

Regional deployments

By region, grid-scale BESS deployments in October were:

  • China: 2,988MW/8,786 (69.2% of the total, by MWh)
  • North America: 812MW/2,281MWh (18.0% of total)
  • Oceania/Australia: 500MW/800MWh (7.7% of total)
  • Europe: 128MW/437MWh (3.4% of total)
  • Middle East: 104MW/208MWh (1.6% of total)

In the US, notable projects on which commercial operation was announced in October include 50MW/100MWh and 150MW/300MWh projects in ERCOT, Texas, from Eolian and Nightpeak Energy respectively in the first week.

Two weeks later, Energy-Storage.news reported on record-breaking projects from Ameresco and Alliant Energy, in Arizona and Wisconsin, totalling 50MW/200MWh and 100MW/400MWh of capacity, respectively.

In Australia, Epic Energy brought its 100MW/200MWh Mannum battery storage system online, while CleanCo Queensland’s 250MW/500MWh BESS at a former coal site entered commissioning.

Meanwhile in Europe, notable projects that contributed to its 128MW/437MWh figure were a 65MW/260MWh one from Renalfa in Bulgaria and a 10MW/47MWh one from Giga Storage in the Netherlands.

This article is part of a monthly series for ESN Premium. See the previous ones here:




2 December 2026
Italy
Battery Asset Management Summit Europe is the annual meeting for owners, operators, investors, and optimisation specialists working with operational BESS assets across the continent. The Summit focuses on how to maximise performance and revenue, manage degradation, integrate advanced optimisation software, navigate evolving market and regulatory frameworks, and plan for repowering or end-of-life strategies. With insights from Europe’s most active storage markets, it equips attendees with practical guidance to run resilient, profitable battery portfolios as the sector scales.
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