US Storage Installations Hit a Record 20.2 GWh in Q2, Lifting Full-Year Forecasts
A record utility-scale quarter and an 11.5% forecast upgrade through 2030 position storage as the fastest-moving segment of the US power buildout.
US developers installed 20.2 GWh of new energy storage in the second quarter of 2026, the largest quarterly deployment on record, according to a report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence released on Tuesday (2026-09-01). Total first-half installations reached 30.8 GWh.4
Utility-scale projects carried the result. Eighteen GWh of the quarterly total came from the utility segment, supported by seven gigawatt-scale projects, while Arizona alone installed more than 6.2 GWh, the largest quarterly deployment by any single state on record.4 Storage is no longer a marginal add-on to the generation stack in high-penetration markets.
SEIA and Benchmark raised their installation forecast by 11.5% through 2030, expecting annual installations to exceed 110 GWh.4 The residential segment added just 657 MWh in the quarter, a fraction of the utility-scale total, while commercial and industrial installations reached 1.8 GWh, driven largely by data centre power demand.4
The C&I figure is the one to track. Data centre operators are contracting for on-site storage to secure reliability, not purely for arbitrage against wholesale prices. If the data centre buildout slows, that segment's contribution shrinks quickly.
Utility-scale battery storage capacity in the United States has risen at an average annual rate of 70% over the past three years, according to the EIA.4 That compound growth rate has held through supply chain pressure and shifting federal incentives. It also means the storage fleet is large enough now to affect evening ramp economics in high-penetration markets such as California and Arizona.
Tesla's utility-scale battery business is riding the same wave. The company signed a multi-year supply and execution agreement with clean energy infrastructure provider NatPower for more than 25 GWh of battery energy storage systems.3 That single contract is roughly equal to the entire US first-half build, underscoring how concentrated the pipeline is among a handful of large developers and suppliers.
Global forecasters expect the market to keep expanding. BESS installations are projected to reach 200 GW and 655 GWh of cumulative capacity by 2031, with the utility sector accounting for 85% of installations through the period.3 If that pipeline materialises, storage becomes a structural buyer of battery cells and a sustained competitor to gas peakers in capacity markets.
The on-grid battery energy storage market is forecast to reach USD 141.37 billion by 2035.5 The broader distributed energy generation market was valued at USD 538.2 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach USD 884.8 billion by 2033, a 6.4% CAGR, according to Grand View Research, with solar PV accounting for 61.3% of the 2025 total and projected to be the fastest-growing technology segment through 2033 at an 8.3% CAGR.1
The contrast with Europe is instructive. SolarPower Europe said in June that European battery storage would grow 44% in 2026, surpassing 50 GWh of annual installations for the first time, driven by utility-scale projects, Montel reported on Tuesday (2026-06-23).2 Europe's permitting and grid connection queues have slowed projects across several EU markets, creating execution risk that the US is not immune to either.
The Americas are expected to lead growth in a global microgrid market forecast at USD 60 billion through 2030, with Canada contributing as off-grid and remote communities deploy microgrids to cut diesel reliance.6
Two risks sit beneath the forecast upgrade. Interconnection queues remain the binding constraint on utility-scale projects in the United States, and the 11.5% forecast revision assumes those queues clear faster than recent history suggests. On the demand side, residential storage is barely contributing to the headline numbers, and C&I growth remains tied to a single sector. The next concrete read comes from SEIA and Benchmark's third-quarter data, due in early December.4