Arizona leads nation in battery storage growth, overtaking Texas

Arizona is increasingly pairing its solar resources with storage to capture power generated in the state.

BY JEFF GIFFORD/PHOENIX BUSINESS JOURNAL

Sep 4, 2026, 1:56 PM

Arizona has become the nation’s growth leader for battery electric storage systems....

Recurrent Energy's Papago Storage facility in Tonopah, Arizona. (Blattner Energy photo)

(Blattner Energy photo)

Arizona has become the nation’s growth leader for battery electric storage systems, with more than 6.2 gigawatt-hours of new storage added in the second quarter and two of the nation’s largest projects located in the state.

That storage capacity jump made Q2 the strongest quarter for any single state on record and demonstrates how Arizona is increasingly pairing its solar resources with storage to capture power generated in the state, according to the Q3 U.S. Energy Storage Market Outlook, released Monday by the Solar Energy Industries Association and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

Arizona overtook Texas for new capacity added during the first half of the year, with the Grand Canyon State accounting for a 27% market share in 2026, the report said. Arizona and Texas were two out of four states to have deployed more than a gigawatt-hour of battery storage for the year’s first half — the other two states being California and Utah.

The latest results show continued momentum for Arizona, which in the first quarter installed the second-highest amount of battery storage capacity in the nation.

In the U.S. as a whole, utility-scale battery energy stationary storage, or BESS, capacity has increased 23% year-over-year throughout the first half of 2026, with Q2 2026 alone up 11% over Q2 2025 and adding juice to what was a relatively weak start for the year overall, the report said.

This story is posted in partnership with Phoenix Business Journal. Click to read the full story.