Despite new data showing spreading pockets of community opposition, battery energy storage is on the upswing in the United States, its future brightened by boosts that include growing efforts to better vet projects for safety, supportive policy, and continued advances in technology.

At least two new reports, one from the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) and the other from American Clean Power Association (ACPA)/Wood Mackenzie, frame 2025 as a year of near-record recent growth. 

BCSE’s put total newly installed utility-scale energy storage at 15GW, up 35% over 2024. The ACPA report put the number at almost 19GW, a 52% gain. But the latter tally includes more than 800MW of new residential storage, a sub-category that boomed in 2025 partly because of looming changes to federal tax credits affecting both home solar installations and storage, which are closely linked. And the pace is continuing into 2026; a Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) analysis of a recent U.S. Energy Information Administration report put new home battery installations in Q1 alone at a robust 673MW.

Residential storage growth, however, skewed toward a few states and may have gotten a one-time boost from a push to install solar, paired with a battery, ahead of more restrictive federal tax credits for both solar and storage (see Figure). States that have stepped in to provide their own incentives, notably California, Hawaii, Texas, and Arizona, accounted for a large share of new home storage installs, according to the BNEF analysis.

Battery energy storage system (BESS) growth, though, may be spawning opposition. Worries about BESS fire and toxicity issues, heightened by some recent incidents, have prompted growing pushback from community members in areas of heavy BESS concentration. 

A firm that consults on utility-scale BESS puts the number of local government-enacted moratoriums, bans, or restrictive ordinances on BESS at more than 150 across 17 states. Reflective of the potency of the opposition, Delaware-based Carina Energy maintains a BESS Moratorium Monitor that seems to provide evidence that “the moratorium problem is growing faster than the industry realizes," says Malaquias Encarnacion, Carina managing director, in a news release. New York accounts for more than half the activity, but opposition is rising in some Midwestern states.

Mindful of the trend, BESS developers are having to put more resources into ensuring and demonstrating safety, and some organizations are stepping in to offer guidance. UL Solutions, Inc., Northbrook, Ill., is promoting a new service to help BESS developers, integrators and manufacturers evaluate projects for their alignment with recently enacted National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) requirements addressing safety risks.

In a news release announcing the service, UL says “stakeholders face growing pressure to demonstrate that systems are designed and documented to mitigate fire spread and deflagration hazards. UL Solutions’ new evaluation services help simplify this process, improve project readiness and strengthen technical packages for local code authorities.”

With safety concerns growing alongside BESS project rollouts, the search continues for ways to make an out-of-the-box safer alternative to the lithium-ion battery, which dominates systems now but carries inherent fire risks.

A technology touted as being possibly safer, sodium-ion, continues to be explored and may now have a new breakthrough. One company exploring the technology, San Diego-based Unigrid, Inc., says it has made the first installation of its sodium-ion residential energy storage systems (RESS), Na+Casa™ in homes across Europe and is looking to year-end for the first U.S. installations. Among other features, the technology, “eliminates any possibility of thermal propagation due to its inherent safety,” the company says.

Ensuring BESS safety will be an important component of future development trajectory, but project expansion is likely to continue regardless, as recent market research suggests. An equally important variable will be the incentive picture, which has been clouded by recent federal moves to limit tax credits for storage projects. Some have survived, but the requirements have gotten more complex, making detailed assessments as laid out in a recent update more critical for BESS developers.