Renewable energy in the U.S. is facing serious headwinds under the current administration, but one area that is absolutely booming is the manufacturing of battery storage technology for the grid. The legislation in 2025 that put the brakes on multiple aspects of green energy maintained the Biden-era incentives for domestic energy manufacturing and grid battery projects.
Batteries are an essential part of scaling up renewable energy production and the rapid expansion of data centers for AI has generated strong demand for quick-to-build power sources such as battery storage facilities. Batteries will account for about 28% of new U.S. power plant capacity built this year. Some plants that were previously producing batteries for electric vehicles have switched over to grid batteries after the slowdown caused by the removal of tax credits for EV purchases.
For the first time, the country will be able to produce enough grid batteries to meet the surging demand on its own. The U.S. now has the capacity to supply 100% of domestic energy storage product demand with American-built systems. Currently, the country is installing about 60 gigawatt-hours of storage per year. By the end of last year, US factories had the capacity to produce about 70 gigawatt-hours of grid storage systems per year. By the end of this year, that capacity will be 156 gigawatt-hours.
The executive director of the U.S. Energy Storage Coalition described the dizzying pace of growth by the grid-battery manufacturing industry as one of the fastest industrial scale-ups in recent American history.
