US Home Battery Installs Hit a Record 673 MW in Q1 Despite Lost Tax Credits
US homeowners installed a record 673 MW of home batteries in the first quarter of 2026, even though the federal tax credit that helped pay for them ended at the end of 2025.
The numbers
Canary Media highlighted the figure on 14 August in its chart of the week. It comes from a BloombergNEF analysis of US Energy Information Administration data that Bloomberg first reported on 1 July. Sales were already at a record in the fourth quarter of 2025, when buyers rushed to claim the expiring credit, and they rose again in the first quarter.
A separate count by Wood Mackenzie and the American Clean Power Association, quoted by Rewiring America, put first-quarter residential storage at 1.3 GWh, up 86 per cent on a year earlier, with 45 per cent of new solar systems paired with a battery. These figures use different units and methods from the EIA's 673 MW, so they should not be added or compared directly.
Why demand held up
Canary Media points to three drivers: high and rising utility bills, state programmes, and a market where solar and electric vehicle sales have both fallen. California made up roughly three-quarters of US home battery installations in 2024 and 2025, and has offered incentives to pair storage with solar since 2023. Hawaii, which has the country's highest electricity rates, launched a storage incentive in 2025 that drove a surge in the first quarter.
BloombergNEF expects US residential solar installations to fall in 2026 to their lowest level since 2020, so batteries are growing against a shrinking solar market.
Good to know
MW measures how fast batteries can deliver power. GWh measures how much energy they store. A rise in MW does not tell you how much storage was added.
What UK readers can take from it
The US picture is shaped by state policy and by tax rules that have no UK equivalent. What does carry over is the logic: batteries sell best where bills are high and where the price of electricity changes through the day. In Britain, that case rests on tariffs and your own usage, which our guide to how a home battery saves money explains.
We could not confirm full-year 2026 US figures from these sources, and the quarterly totals may be revised as EIA data is updated.
Sources
- Canary Media: Home battery installations climb despite loss of federal incentives
- Rewiring America: The household battery boom points to a homegrown energy future
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