Global energy storage installations passed 100 GW in 2025 for the first time, and the momentum is not slowing down. BloombergNEF (BNEF) projects 123 GW / 360 GWh of new deployments in 2026 — a 33% increase year-over-year. ¹ But the story behind those numbers is changing. Growth is shifting from policy-mandated installations toward market-driven economics, and from a China-dominated supply picture toward a genuinely global industry.
As a BNEF Tier 1 energy storage manufacturer for six consecutive quarters with systems deployed across more than 50 countries, Great Power has direct visibility into these shifts. This article examines five trends that will define the energy storage landscape in 2026.
Trend 1: The Great Supply Chain Repricing
The era of continuously falling lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cell prices may be over — at least temporarily. LFP cell prices dropped to approximately $70/kWh by late 2025, driven by overcapacity and aggressive competition among Chinese manufacturers. But the market turned sharply in the fourth quarter. According to InfoLink Consulting, cell costs in January 2026 rose more than 23% compared to October 2025, while transaction prices for mainstream 314 Ah cells increased over 16%. ²
The cause is straightforward: demand caught up with supply. Since the second half of 2025, leading cell manufacturers have faced capacity shortages as global installations accelerated. Mainstream cell prices are expected to remain above RMB 0.30/Wh through 2026, more than 15% higher than 2025 averages. ²
Simultaneously, the U.S.-China supply chain is decoupling. U.S. tariff policies now effectively exclude Chinese-manufactured battery modules from federally incentivized projects. In response, Korean and other international manufacturers are retooling domestic U.S. plants for stationary storage production, accelerating a regionalization trend that will reshape procurement for years to come. ¹
For project developers, the implication is clear: procurement timelines must start earlier, and supply chain diversification is no longer optional. Vertically integrated manufacturers with in-house cell production and global facility networks — Great Power operates nine production facilities worldwide — are better positioned to absorb these price swings and maintain delivery commitments. The company signed multi-GWh cell supply agreements at both ESIE Beijing and CIBF 2025, reflecting this shift toward securing capacity ahead of demand.
Trend 2: The Shift to 600 Ah+ Cells
The industry’s standard cell format is evolving rapidly. The 280 Ah cell that dominated 2022–2023 gave way to 314 Ah in 2024. Now, 580–600+ Ah cells are entering mass production across multiple manufacturers.
The advantages are structural: larger cells mean fewer cell-to-cell connections per system, simpler pack architecture, and lower assembly costs. At the system level, this translates into higher energy density per container and a lower levelized cost of storage (LCOS).
The trade-off is thermal management. Larger cells generate more heat per unit and require more precise cooling to maintain uniform temperature across the pack. Without adequate thermal control, the cycle life benefits of LFP chemistry are compromised.
Great Power’s 590 Ultra cell, launched at its 2024 Product and Technology Conference, represents this generation of high-capacity LFP cells. It delivers 97% energy efficiency with over 10,000 cycles and a 25-year calendar life, achieved through micro-nano structural design and a three-dimensional superconducting network. Safety features include a self-healing solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) film and gel electrolyte. The company is also ramping 600 Ah+ cells, showcased at SNEC Shanghai and CIBF 2025.
Trend 3: Regional Markets Diverge
The global energy storage market is no longer a single story. Each major region is developing its own growth logic.
China remains the volume leader, but the policy environment is changing. The government removed its mandate requiring energy storage to be paired with new renewable installations, shifting instead toward market-based revenue mechanisms. ³ This introduces short-term uncertainty around project economics but signals market maturation — storage must now compete on its own financial merits.
The United States retained its Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for standalone storage, providing a stable incentive floor. However, new supply chain requirements effectively bar Chinese-manufactured modules from ITC-eligible projects, forcing a rapid restructuring of procurement. Texas is projected to overtake California as the largest U.S. battery storage market in 2026, with major projects including the 621 MW Lunis Creek BESS scheduled for commercial operation. ⁴
Europe saw installations grow 160% in 2025. ³ The United Kingdom leads in utility-scale deployments, while Germany dominates the residential segment. The European Commission is expected to set a harmonized framework for grid-forming inverter requirements in 2026 — a technical standard that will increasingly become a commercial differentiator.
Emerging markets are scaling rapidly. Australia became the third-largest global market in 2025 with 11.4 GWh of new installations, a 338% year-over-year increase. ² India, Brazil, and South Korea are building tender pipelines that will drive deployment from 2026 onward.
Great Power’s global footprint spans all of these regions. The company established a European office in Germany, exhibited at Intersolar Europe, RE+ in the United States, and Electric & Power Indonesia, and formalized a strategic partnership with Omni Power at Intersolar 2025. In emerging markets, discussions with the Ambassador of the Republic of The Gambia on solar-plus-storage projects in West Africa illustrate the company’s reach into developing economies where grid-scale storage can leapfrog traditional infrastructure.
Trend 4: Beyond Lithium-Ion — Sodium-Ion and Long-Duration Enter the Arena
Lithium-ion will remain the dominant chemistry in 2026, but the industry is moving toward a multi-chemistry future. Sodium-ion technology, in particular, is transitioning from pilot projects to commercial-scale deployment.
Great Power has been building toward this moment for years. The company began its sodium-ion R&D in 2021 and was among the first Chinese manufacturers to pass national evaluation for sodium-ion batteries in 2023. Since then, it has commercialized its SIB26650 sodium-ion cells and deployed the first 5 MW / 10 MWh sodium-ion battery energy storage power station at the Qingdao North Coast Big Data Center — one of the earliest commercial sodium-ion ESS projects in China. The project opened the door for sodium-ion applications in energy storage for data centers and demonstrated that the technology is ready for real-world grid-connected operation.
The broader industry is following. Multiple major cell manufacturers announced scaled sodium-ion production plans for 2026, with applications spanning energy storage, passenger vehicles, and commercial vehicles. ⁵ Industry analysts describe a “dual-track” future in which sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries develop in parallel rather than one replacing the other. ³
Sodium-ion’s sweet spot is clear: cold-climate installations where lithium-ion performance degrades, cost-sensitive markets where raw material pricing matters, and short-duration applications where energy density is less critical. With sodium abundantly available and free from the supply concentration risks that affect lithium and cobalt, the chemistry also offers a more resilient procurement path.
Combined with its ongoing solid-state battery R&D (first-generation prototype completed in 2024), Great Power’s multi-chemistry roadmap — LFP, sodium-ion, and solid-state — positions it to match the right chemistry to the right application, rather than forcing a single technology across all use cases.
On the long-duration front, the market for storage systems rated at 8–100+ hours is projected to grow from $3.9 billion in 2026 to $9.5 billion by 2035, driven by iron-air, vanadium redox flow, and compressed air technologies seeking to address seasonal balancing needs that lithium-ion cannot economically serve. ⁶
Trend 5: Data Centers — The Emerging Demand Driver
The artificial intelligence boom is reshaping electricity demand at a speed that grid planners did not anticipate. In Texas, ERCOT’s large-load interconnection requests quadrupled in 2025, driven almost entirely by data center development. ⁴
Battery storage plays multiple roles in this context: replacing or supplementing traditional uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems with higher energy density and longer duration; buffering grid connections to enable faster data center energization without costly transmission upgrades; and enabling 24/7 carbon-free energy procurement through corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) that pair renewable generation with storage.
Data centers in cold climates — Northern Europe, Canada, northern China — face the additional challenge of battery performance in low temperatures. Great Power’s POLAR series cells, built with Low-Temperature Super Conductivity (LTSC) technology, charge at −30°C with over 95% efficiency, directly addressing this constraint. The company’s high-power UPS battery line already serves mission-critical facilities where downtime is not an option.
What It All Means
Energy storage in 2026 is no longer a supplementary technology bolted onto the grid as an afterthought. It is becoming the primary tool for grid reliability, renewable integration, and demand flexibility.
The market is repricing, with cell costs rebounding from unsustainable lows. It is diversifying, with sodium-ion and long-duration technologies reaching commercial viability. And it is globalizing, with emerging markets from Australia to Brazil building their own storage ecosystems.
The manufacturers that will lead this next phase share common characteristics: vertically integrated supply chains that buffer against price volatility, multi-chemistry portfolios that match the right technology to the right application, and a global deployment track record that proves reliability at scale. Great Power’s position — a BNEF Tier 1 manufacturer with LFP, sodium-ion, and solid-state R&D, over one million installed systems with zero safety incidents, and presence in more than 50 countries — reflects exactly this profile.
The next 100 GW will look very different from the first.
Great Power is a world-class battery manufacturer established in 2001 and listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (stock code: 300438). The company specializes in lithium-ion and sodium-ion battery R&D, manufacturing, and system integration for energy storage, EVs, and consumer electronics. Learn more at greatpower.net/en.
References
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- InfoLink Consulting. “2026 Energy Storage Outlook: Five Major Trends Defining the Energy Storage Industry.” InfoLink, Mar. 2026, www.infolink-group.com/energy-article/energy-storage-topic-2026-outlook.
- Kennedy, Ryan. “Five Trends for Energy Storage as Global Market Passes 100 GW.” PV Magazine International, 27 Jan. 2026, www.pv-magazine.com/2026/01/27/five-trends-for-energy-storage.
- Kennedy, Ryan. “Solar and Storage to Lead Record-Breaking 86 GW of New U.S. Capacity in 2026.” PV Magazine USA, 25 Feb. 2026, pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/25/solar-and-storage-to-lead-record-breaking-86-gw.
- “Sodium-Ion Batteries Gain Momentum: Unigrid Launches Commercial Deliveries as Altris, Draslovka Forge Europe’s First Supply Chain.” PV Magazine International, 16 Jan. 2026, www.pv-magazine.com/2026/01/16/sodium-ion-batteries-gain-momentum.
- “Long Duration Energy Storage Market, Growth Forecasts 2035.” Global Market Insights, Feb. 2026, www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/long-duration-energy-storage-market.
