US Battery Installations Hit a Quarterly Record, Led by Big Utility Projects

Battery installations hit a new record in the United States in the second quarter of 2026, with 20.2 gigawatt-hours of new capacity coming online — enough to supply the daily electricity needs of about 700,000 homes, according to a new report from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and the Solar Energy Industries Association. The surge puts the country on track to install 71 gigawatt-hours of batteries in 2026, a 20% increase over last year, driven by cheaper batteries and a growing need for storage as more solar and onshore wind power is added to the grid.

Massive utility-scale systems led the way, accounting for most of the record-setting quarter; seven new gigascale battery installations, each with a capacity of more than one gigawatt-hour, came online during the three-month stretch. "It really came down to a handful of big projects," said Shan Tomouk, energy storage and energy lead for Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

So-called behind-the-meter batteries — smaller residential and industrial systems typically owned by homeowners or businesses rather than utilities — also grew, with data centres making up about three-quarters of new batteries in the commercial sector. Residential batteries, however, saw a sharp slowdown: home installations are projected to drop 16% in 2026 compared with last year, largely because a tax credit that helped subsidise home battery systems ended in 2025, Tomouk said, though she expects home installations to recover by the end of the decade.

"This is one of the strong sectors in the US," said Isshu Kikuma, an energy storage analyst at BloombergNEF. Today, nearly all the systems coming online use battery cells made in China, though some are assembled into complete energy storage systems in the US; tariffs and new rules requiring storage tax-credit projects to limit reliance on Chinese-made batteries are pushing the industry toward domestic production.

There is a lot of US manufacturing capacity set to come online, but Tomouk said these factories probably will not be able to meet demand until at least 2030, so prices could tick up in the meantime.