According to estimates from BloombergNEF analysts, global energy storage systems commissioned in 2025 exceeded a record of 112 GW, which is comparable to the scale of new large-scale power plants and even entire national power grids.
The total capacity of batteries installed during the year reached 307 GWh. Analysts forecast the global market growth by another 41%, reaching 158 GW and 459 GWh of new capacity, as early as 2026. By the end of 2036, the total power of global energy storage systems might reach 2,867 GW, with a total capacity of 10,514 GWh. By that time, annual installation of new storage systems is expected to rise to 306 GW.
China remains the leader in new capacity additions: in 2025, it accounted for 54% of all new energy storage systems. The United States ranks second with a 16% share. Large-scale energy complexes were the bulk of the new projects: in 2025, they accounted for about 85% of all the installed storage systems. Most often, such facilities are built in conjunction with solar and wind power plants and used for storage of excess generated energy and its subsequent feeding back into the grid.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries still dominate the market: they account for about 90% of the annual capacity growth among lithium-ion energy storage systems. At the same time, analysts expect a gradual increase in the share of other technologies. In particular, the market for long-duration energy storage systems (i.e., storage units able to operate for six hours or more) may grow approximately fourfold by the end of the decade and reach 2 GW of annual installations. Sodium-ion batteries are supposed to be a potentially cheaper alternative to lithium-ion batteries.
At the same time, the gap between the construction rate of solar power plants and energy storage systems is rapidly narrowing. With only one storage unit for every 56 units of new solar generation in 2026, this ratio fell to 6:1 by 2025 and might drop to 4:1 by 2026, which means that energy storage systems are gradually becoming an essential part of new solar generation, helping to compensate its intermittent output.
According to Isshu Kikuma, a Senior Associate for Energy Storage at BloombergNEF, the storage sector is experiencing an unprecedented growth rate. It took just four years for annual energy storage installations to grow from 10 to over 100 GW, whereas it took about eight years for solar power to reach a similar leap, and approximately 15 years – for wind power.
