By Kennedy Maize
Battery energy storage, barely on the electric industry radar screen a decade ago, is transforming the industry in the U.S. and around the world, providing a means for “intermittent” generation — primarily solar — to offer low-cost power around the clock, as needed.
Advocates of the radioactive and fossilized electric systems of the past — particularly President Trump and his often seemingly clueless Energy Secretary Chris Wright — tout “baseload” power and dismiss solar and wind as not “dispatchable.” They gleefully point out their remarkable discovery that the sun doesn’t shine at night, and the wind doesn’t blow all the time.
They don’t appear to understand that dispatchability is an economic concept, not a physical attribute. It’s about how to serve the needs of the market with the least expensive resources as the electric load changes rapidly during the 24-hour cycle.
Modern grid managers, not backward-looking Washington politicians, want to match the electric load at any time period with the lowest cost of generation available. The load varies. At night, it’s much lower than at midday. Solar alone isn’t available, even when it’s the lowest cost generation on the system. That generally leaves nukes, coal, and gas to meet the lower nighttime load. 
Expensive nuclear power must run 24-7, 365, by design and regulation. That’s a bug, not a feature. It’s often the costliest power available. So, at night, the most expensive power on the grid — the nuclear “baseload” — and often coal, which is difficult to ramp up and down — get sent to serve the load, displacing much cheaper solar and, sometimes, wind.
Natural gas generation can readily ramp up and down as demand changes. Gas has problems when temperatures drop to well below freezing, as Texas and the Mid-Atlantic have found in recent years. And it is often also more expensive than solar and wind.
Batteries change that picture, providing the ability to follow load along with gas. Utility scale battery technology is advancing rapidly, providing much longer periods of availability. Both California and Texas have had great success using stored electricity to meet nighttime loads.
The “baseload first” paradigm no longer holds, particularly in the developing world, according to the British energy think tank Ember.
In a recent report, Ember found, “The conventional fossil-based development model has failed to reach them at scale. For countries with limited state capacity and high borrowing costs, this lumpy, centralised, capital-intensive fossil path has always been a tall order.”
Instead, “A different path is now available. Rapid cost declines in electrotech – such as solar, battery storage, and electric end-use technologies – are reshaping the economics of energy in these markets.” This means that the new energy economics are “pricing in the billion people the fossil system left behind. The shift is already under way and moving faster than many recognise.”
What’s changed? According to Ember, “A decade ago, a solar plant could require up to five times the upfront investment of a comparable coal or gas plant per MWh delivered. Solar could still be competitive over its full lifetime through avoided fuel costs; but where capital is scarce, lifetime economics rarely determine investment decisions. Upfront costs do, and on that measure solar used to lose.
“That has now changed. Solar alone is now competitive with fossil power on a pure capital expenditure (capex) basis, and solar-plus-storage is expected to follow by around 2030. By 2035, both will be cheaper to build than new fossil alternatives. It is now fossil fuels, not solar, that carry the burden of capital intensity.
And once built, solar has no fuel costs: it beats fossil alternatives from day one and widens its advantage with every year of operation.”
It’s not just the developing world that is benefiting. Earlier this month (Sept. 1), the Solar Energy Industries Association, the industry’s Washington lobbying group, reported, “The U.S. energy storage industry installed a record 20.2 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of new capacity in Q2, bringing total installations in the first half of 2026 to 30.8 GWh….” According to SEIA and its consultant, London-based Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, Utility-scale energy storage capacity has nearly doubled from 88 GWh to 165 GWh in the first 18 months of the Trump administration, as grid operators, utilities and energy buyers turn to storage to strengthen reliability and meet rising electricity demand.
Demand for energy storage is outpacing expectations, prompting a 11.5% increase in the report’s forecast through 2030 to 683 GWh. The upward revision comes as the industry continues to set deployment records, with more than 10% of all energy storage capacity currently installed in the U.S. coming online in Q2 alone.”
The “back to the future” message from Trump and Wright isn’t getting traction even in Trump country. SEIA notes coyly, “More than 74% of the energy storage capacity installed in Q2 was built in states won by President Donald Trump in 2024, led largely by Arizona, Texas, and Utah.”
SEIA president and CEO is Tim Pawlenty, Republican governor of Minnesota from 2003 to 2011.
The Quad Report, covering energy policy and politics