Developers in the US plan to install 15GW of new utility-scale battery storage this year, adding to about 16GW of storage installed so far, according to government statistics.
Analysis from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the US Department of Energy (DOE) found that by the end of this year the cumulative installed base will have doubled to exceed 30GW if developers’ projects are finished on time.
The data comes from the EIA’s Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory, collected from survey Form EIA-860M. That collects generator-level specific information about existing and planned generators and associated equipment for resources of over a megawatt.
It’s the second year in a row that the EIA has said developers’ plans amounted to a near-doubling of the installed base of battery energy storage system (BESS) assets.
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As of the end of 2022, EIA had counted up about 8.8GW of operational grid-scale BESS, and said a further 9.4GW was anticipated to be added in 2023.
However that discrepancy between today’s installed base of 16GW and last year’s expectation that the base would have reached 18.2GW by now also means there were about 2GW of planned projects that didn’t make it over the line last year.
This is perhaps due to industry headwinds like supply chain constraints, permitting delays and interconnection waiting times, which analysis firm Wood Mackenzie identified as the causes of delays for around that amount of new storage in a quarterly report on the US market during last year.
As with last year, California and Texas will see the most battery storage installations among US states. As of November 2023, California had 7,302MW of utility-scale BESS, and Texas 3,167MW.
All other US state’s installed capacity by the end of last year added up to 3.5GW, less than half California’s capacity. The next biggest state after California and Texas, Arizona, was on just 803MW.
The EIA found also that so far, developers are planning 9GW of additions in 2025, but presumably this figure will rise as the date gets closer. In total more than 300 utility-scale projects are expected to come online by the end of 2025.
With Texas’ ERCOT merchant energy storage market opportunity facilitating rapid growth, around half of all new additions will be in that state, EIA said, and a list of the five biggest projects in California and Texas planned for 2024-2025 includes two projects of 600MW or more each.
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