Eight years ago, the Energy Storage Association set a goal for the United States to deploy 35 gigawatts (GW) of batteries connected to the grid by the end of 2025. That goal was met—and exceeded. By the third quarter of this year, 4.7 GW of batteries (for a total of more than 40 GW since 2017) had been installed, Canary Media reported.

Energy storage in now one of the largest sources of new power for the U.S. grid. According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, renewables were the leading source of new capacity in 2025 and accounted for almost half of all new renewable power deployed on the grid from July through September.

Arizona, California and Texas—states where the grid has been under strain—are the recipients of most of the new storage capacity deployment. What is learned in those states will be used to help other areas deploy battery storage to their grids. This could specifically benefit the Midwest and East Coast, which are struggling to keep up with new data center construction.

The idea is spreading to other industries as start-up businesses get creative.

• Redwood Materials, a start-up co-founded by Tesla alumnus J.B. Straubel in Carson City, Nev., added a new business line to repurpose used electric vehicle batteries for grid-scale storage. Taking advantage of overlapping trends (batteries arriving at its recycling facilities had plenty of life left in them and the battery storage industry was growing rapidly), Redwood intends to deploy 20 gigawatt-hours’ worth of battery storage by 2028, fueled by $350 million in additional investment.
• Base Power, another startup based in Austin, Texas, has begun leasing batteries to homeowners and aggregating them to serve as a large virtual power plant. After deploying more than 100 megawatt-hours of batteries in Texas, the company raised $1 billion to help build a battery factory, with the intention to expand this plan beyond Texas.
• Sizable Energy, Palo Alto, Calif., is one of several start-ups moving away from lithium-ion batteries to pursue other technologies that could lower storage costs. They’re working on a way to store power in flexible reservoirs that float in the ocean.
• Fourth Power, Cambridge, Mass., uses blocks of carbon to store heat at super-high temperatures. The company hopes to deploy them in 2028—at a significantly lower cost than lithium-ion batteries or peaking natural gas power plants.
• XL Batteries, Marlborough, Mass., is deploying new flow-battery technology at petrochemical storage sites. Using existing infrastructure, this technology can store hundreds of megawatt-hours.
• Cache Energy, Champaign, Ill., has developed inexpensive pellets of calcium hydroxide to store energy for months with minimal losses.

As the energy storage industry expands and changes to meet increased demand, it may one day rewire the U.S. grid and global energy markets with affordable new models incorporating solar and wind, which remain the cheapest forms of new electricity.