About 315 GWh was installed across both grid-scale and behind-the-meter battery energy storage system (BESS) markets in 2025, representing nearly 50% year-on-year growth, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
Geographically, China and the United States led deployments, with China far outpacing all other markets. The world’s largest BESS market installed more battery capacity in December alone than the US – the second-largest market – deployed over the entire year. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and Chile moved into third, fourth, and fifth place, respectively, displacing the UK and Italy from 2024’s top five markets.
Grid-scale projects were the primary driver of growth, accounting for nearly 240 GWh of global installations. Project sizes continued to increase, with 46 giga-scale projects entering operation in 2025, up from 17 in 2024. Looking ahead, more than 150 giga-scale projects are currently in the pipeline for 2026.
“2026 is set for another strong year for BESS, with our current forecast for new operational capacity at over 450 GWh, compared to 315 GWh in 2025”, Iola Hughes, Head of Research at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, told ESS News. “There should be no material supply constrain here, with cell production for BESS cells outpacing this growth over the last year, and capacity set to expand further this year.”
To continue reading, please visit our ESS News website.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.