Big batteries have begun reshaping the U.S. grid. Now, the country has made surprising strides in making those energy storage systems itself, rather than depending on imports from China.

Batteries were always crucial for the effort to scale up renewable energy production, but they have taken on even more significance as AI leaders look for quick-to-build power sources to supply their headlong data center expansion.

That’s why batteries will account for some 28 percent of new U.S. power plant capacity built this year. For the first time, the country will be able to produce enough grid batteries to meet that surging demand on its own, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Storage Coalition, an industry group.

The onshoring began in earnest when President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, creating incentives both for domestic battery producers and for storage developers who use made-in-America products.

Already, the U.S. has enough capacity to meet demand for finished grid battery enclosures. That involves connecting battery cells to power electronics, controls and safety equipment in weatherproof steel containers that are ready to install. By the end of this year, the U.S. will also achieve self-sufficiency in a higher-value part of the supply chain: the battery cells themselves. It’s a major industrial coup that is bringing thousands of high-tech manufacturing jobs to communities across the country.

“For the first time, the United States now has the capacity to supply 100 percent of domestic energy storage project demand with American-built systems,” said Noah Roberts, executive director of the U.S. Energy Storage Coalition, on a press call in March. ​“That is a fundamental shift from where we were just a year and a half ago, when the majority of battery storage systems were imported.”

This success outstrips the country’s considerable progress in solar panel manufacturing, too. The U.S. is self-sufficient in assembling solar modules, but that finished product still often depends on high-value components imported from far away — namely, solar cells. U.S. solar cell production remains a tiny fraction of its solar panel capacity.

Read the full article about grid batteries by Julian Spector at Reasons to Be Cheerful.