Over 1.4GW/3.4GWh of grid-scale BESS came online in Europe, likely its best month ever, accounting for almost a fifth of global figures and more than what it deployed in the whole of 2023.
Last month, 6.7GW/18.4GWh of grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity entered commercial operations across the globe according to data from Benchark Mineral Intelligence.
Unsurprisingly, China was the single largest market with 2,765MW/8,536MWh coming online, around 40% of the total. It has accounted for between 40-80% of global figures since we started tracking them with data from Benchmark as part of a monthly ESN Premium series.
The next largest region was Europe with 1,435MW/3,441MWh coming online, its best month since we started publishing the figures and almost certainly its best month ever. It was more than the 3.3GWh the continent deployed in all of 2023, Benchmark said. The previous highest monthly figure was in December 2025 when 1,074MW/2,289MWh came online.
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Other regions had strong months in March too:
- Asia excluding China: 643MW/1,641MWh
- North America: 541MW/1,638MWh
- Oceania (including Australia): 980MW/1,910MWh
- South & Central America: 245MW/1,138MWh
- Africa: 54MW/66MWh
The only region that didn’t see any projects come online was the Middle East, but that market is characterised by only a handful of projects, but all huge.
The figures for the first quarter of the year are below:
| Region | MW | MWh |
| Africa | 84 | 156 |
| Asia (ex-China) | 736 | 2,016 |
| China | 9,110 | 24,427 |
| Europe | 2,921 | 6,440 |
| Middle East | 0 | 0 |
| North America | 2,401 | 7,319 |
| Oceania | 3,021 | 8,323 |
| South & Central America | 605 | 2,608 |
Regional highlights
Seven projects of 100MWh or over came online in Europe to help reach this milestone, including projects across Germany, France, England, Scotland and Belgium, Benchmark said. We reported on projects from owner-operators Field in Germany and SSE Renewables in the UK. An 8-hour vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) of 9MWh also came online in Spain, Benchmark said.
The largest project to come online in March was the 1GW/4GWh Envision Alashan Standalone Project in Inner Mongolia, China, the research firm added.
In Chile, Engie commissioned a 230MWh project, called Los Loros while in the US, Ormat put a 320MWh system online in California.
In India, ACME Solar commissioned just over 480MWh of capacity in Rajasthan. The Asia excluding China region’s strong performance may have been helped by that and a 500MW/1GWh grid-forming project going online in Cambodia.
In Australia, projects from Origin Energy, Iberdrola, Valent Energy and AGL entered commissioning, totalling around 2.6GWh, though its not clear if they actually entered full commercial operations during the month.
See previous monthly entries in our Global BESS Deployments Roundup, with data kindly provided by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, here.
