Battery power capacity in the US grew big time in 2020
A worker installs solar panel at the Connexus Energy Athens Township solar-plus-storage project site in Athens Township, Minnesota, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2018. | Ari Lindquist/Bloomberg via Getty Images
2020 was a big year for big batteries in the US, which is crucial for getting grids to run on more renewable energy. Power capacity — a measure of how much power a battery can instantly discharge — for large-scale batteries grew at an unprecedented pace in the US last year, according to an annual report released this week by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
2020 smashed the previous record set in 2018 for the biggest growth in power capacity in the US with 489MW of large-scale battery storage added. That’s more than twice what was added in 2018. By the end of last year, there was 1,523MW of large-scale battery power capacity in the US. For comparison, the largest solar farm in...
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