Global battery energy storage installed capacity will soar between 2025 and 2030, according to GlobalData, driven by rising demand from electrification, industry and data centers, alongside falling lithium-ion costs and stronger supply chains.
A 42% compound annual growth rate will drive global battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity through 2030, according to GlobalData’s new “Strategic Intelligence: Batteries in Power (2026)” report, with China and the United States together holding 74.6% of installed capacity at the end of 2025.
The US market closed 2025 with a record 57.6 GWh of new storage additions, bringing total cumulative grid-scale capacity to 137 GWh, according to the report. Momentum accelerated into 2026, with first-quarter installations reaching 9.7 GWh, a 32% year-over-year increase and the largest first quarter on record for the US sector.
Front-of-the-meter utility-scale projects accounted for more than 75% of domestic volume, with developers adding 7.8 GWh in the first quarter of 2026 alone. The US Energy Information Administration projects 24 GW of utility-scale batteries will come online in 2026, with buildouts concentrated in Texas (53%), California (14%) and Arizona (13%).
The research firm said the industry is shifting from two-hour to four-hour battery systems as higher shares of solar and wind widen the daily mismatch between generation and demand, making it more valuable to shift midday solar output into the evening peak.
Rehaan Shiledar, power analyst at GlobalData, said regulators increasingly treat four-hour duration as a baseline for capacity credit and resource adequacy. In California, programs under the California Public Utilities Commission have made four-hour systems standard. Similar duration-lengthening trends are emerging elsewhere, with UK projects shifting from frequency response toward energy shifting and Middle Eastern tenders contracting multi-hour storage for dispatchable evening solar output.
“Energy shifting has become the fulcrum of the battery storage value proposition, recasting batteries from ancillary grid-support tools into system-critical infrastructure,” Shiledar said.
The report also pointed to co-located solar-plus-storage plants becoming standard practice, as developers share a single interconnection to cut cost and schedule risk, and highlighted growing demand for batteries as backup and balancing infrastructure for data centers.
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