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A total of 112 gigawatts of batteries were deployed around the world in 2025 — 10 times the amount added just four years prior.
See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the Week” column.
First came the solar. Now, the batteries have arrived.
Installations of grid batteries, which can store solar and other energy for later use, surged by 48% in 2025 from the year prior, per new data from BloombergNEF. A total of 112 gigawatts of battery storage capacity was installed worldwide in 2025 — a record high that represents a tenfold increase over the amount constructed in 2021.
So, where are all of these batteries sprouting up? The short answer: mostly in China and the United States.
China alone installed more than half of the world’s grid battery capacity last year. The U.S., meanwhile, accounted for 16%.
Other places are seeing rapid uptake, too. Sun-soaked Australia grew its battery installations by a factor of nearly six last year, albeit from a pretty small base of just 827 megawatts in 2024. The U.K., which shuttered its last coal plant in 2024, saw installations nearly double between 2024 and 2025, to 2.6 GW. Meanwhile, across the broader sub-Saharan Africa region, installations roughly quintupled to 4.3 GW.
Battery installations are now starting to catch up to solar installations, BNEF says. A decade ago, the world was installing 56 MW of solar for every 1 MW of storage. Last year, that ratio was 6-to-1. This year, BNEF expects it to drop to 4-to-1.
The key driver of this growth is the ever-decreasing cost of energy storage, with lithium-ion battery prices dropping by more than 90% over the last 15 years.
The case for batteries is also strengthening as the world builds an incredible amount of wind and solar, since the technology can stockpile wind and solar power when it’s abundant to dispatch later when the grid needs it.
BNEF expects the storage boom to continue as data centers surge onto the grid — especially in the U.S. — and as power demand rises because of the electrification of vehicles and buildings.
The firm forecasts that the world will install a total of 158 GW of batteries in 2026, resulting in 41% year-over-year growth. Although the pace tapers off a bit from there through 2030, BNEF projects that by the end of the decade, annual additions will top 200 GW — more than double the record-setting amount seen last year.
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