China continued to drive global grid-scale BESS commissioning activity in July, as the technology approaches the global installed gigawatt (GW) capacity of pumped hydro.

June 2025 saw a total of 7.96GW/22.17GWh of grid-scale BESS enter commercial operations across 109 projects, with over half of that being in China, while the overall first half of the year saw substantial growth.

The question of where the cells in a BESS are from ties in to safety, performance, design and, increasingly, potential tariffs.

China continues to dominate BESS deployments globally with 4.3GW/11.2GWh of deployments in May, including a 1GWh flow battery system.

Chile, China and Australia drove global BESS deployments in April, a month which saw nearly 9GWh of grid-scale capacity enter commercial operations.

February 2025 saw around 4.5GW/10.5GWh of grid-scale BESS deployments globally, with China continuing to account for the majority but Europe increasing its share from January.

A total of 5.2GW/13.8GWh of grid-scale BESS capacity came online in January 2025, of which over two thirds was in China.

A few weeks ago, a battery recycling deal was announced for a 640MWh BESS project in Australia, but the project isn’t even built yet and the cells have 25-year warranties – we caught up with the company recycling the batteries to hear more.

We get the reaction from other BESS suppliers, consultancies, research firms, optimisers, investors and IPPs to BYD launching a BESS using sodium-ion battery cells, a technology many see as a potential competitor to lithium-ion.

We hear from S&P Global Commodity Insights analysts and a former Fluence executive about the major trends shaping the competitive landscape of system integrators in the BESS industry.