U.S. Battery Capacity Grows 311% in 19 Months

By Christian Roselund

Underscoring the extremely rapid rise of battery storage capacity, a new report has found that the capacity of batteries on the U.S. grid increased 311% from January 2021 through August 2022. Using data from the U.S. Department of Energy, Texas-based consultancy Zpryme reports that cumulative battery installations reached 6,702 megawatts in the month of August 2022, compared to only 1,631 in January 2021.

Zpryme also found that future planned capacity spiked by 5,879 megawatts in the month of August, to reach 22,678 megawatts. However, Zpryme did not comment on how much of this is likely to get built, and in what timeframe. As reported by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in its series Queued Up, most of the projects in the interconnection queues of grid operators do not come online within five years after entering these queues.

Zpryme reports that California continues to dominate installed capacity, with 3,629 megawatts. This is more than half the total capacity in the United States, and California has been adding batteries at a rapid pace to allow it to shift mid-day electricity generation from solar to meet evening peak demand. California’s capacity is three times the capacity installed in Texas, which came in second place with 1,168 megawatts. Florida, Massachusetts, and Nevada round out the top five for installed capacity.

The report also finds that independent power producers own 80% of the installed battery capacity, with utilities holding the rest. The top five battery owners by capacity are NextEra Energy, Terra-Gen, LS Power, Broad Reach Power, and AES. Together these five own 44% of the battery capacity on the grid.

The report did not provide figures in megawatt-hours, but many of the batteries installed on U.S. grids are in the 1 – 4-hour range.

Source: U.S. Battery Project and Capacity Trends (Zpryme)