New York has taken its biggest step yet to jump-start large-scale battery construction, awarding contracts to eight projects totaling 950 MW. The state had only 80 MW of bulk storage as of March, far short of its 2025 target. The new contracts are designed to provide long-term revenue certainty, with NYSERDA topping up or recouping money based on market performance.
The move addresses a financing problem: New York's capacity market offered only six months of predictable revenue, making 20-year battery investments difficult to fund. The new structure lets developers bid a strike price and then settle against a monthly reference rate. Zenobē, one winner, is co-locating with a solar plant to charge cheaply and discharge at peak prices.
Nationally, the picture is brighter. EIA data through July 2026 shows utility-scale battery storage capacity doubled over the prior 18 months, adding 26.6 GW, and projects another 23.4 GW in the next year. Renewables plus batteries are expected to add nearly 83 GW of capacity by mid-2027, while fossil fuel and nuclear capacity decline. Both sources agree storage is expanding, but they differ in scope: New York is still catching up to states like California and Texas, even as the national buildout accelerates.