California’s Battery Storage Jumps Nearly 2,000 Percent Since 2019

The state is looking to reach its climate goal of 52,000 megawatts of battery storage by 2045.

Energy storage containers with Lithium Ion batteries (R) at the University of California–San Diego in La Jolla, Calif., on Sept. 16, 2022. Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images

California’s battery storage capacity needed for its aggressive climate action goals has increased by nearly 2,000 percent since 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on May 19.

The state has added 2,300 megawatts since last September, or enough to power 400,000 homes during peak demand, bringing the state’s total battery storage capacity to 15,763 megawatts, according to new data released by the state.

The state has reached 30 percent of its goal to reach 52,000 megawatts by 2045.

“California is adding battery storage at a pace never seen before as we continue our work to build the grid of the future,” Newsom said in a statement. “The key to a cleaner, more reliable power grid is batteries—and no other jurisdiction on the planet, save China, comes even close to our rapid deployment.”

Energy storage is needed to support the state’s grid for renewable energy resources. The battery systems capture power produced by wind and solar plants during nonpeak times and discharge it back to the electric grid during times of peak demand, making the grid more reliable, according to the governor.

In 2019, the state had 771 megawatts of battery storage. That number has increased substantially each year, reaching 15,763 by the end of January, the California Energy Commission reported on Monday.

Another 8,600 megawatts are planned to come online by the end of 2027, according to the commission.

The city with the largest battery storage is Mojave in Kern County, with 1,500 megawatts of storage capacity.

A San Diego Gas & Electric truck leaves a lithium battery storage facility, where a battery fire erupted a day prior,  in Escondido, Calif., on Sep. 6, 2024. Jane Yang/The Epoch Times

The second-largest capacity for California is in Blythe, near the Arizona border. Blyth’s storage capacity has reached 1,200 megawatts.

On a smaller scale, tens of thousands of homes and businesses with battery systems also provide backup power and flexibility for homes, schools, and businesses. These make up about 2,500 megawatts of battery storage in California—or about 16 percent of the state’s total capacity, the governor’s office reported.

The state projects that it will need 48,000 megawatts of battery storage and 4,000 megawatts of long-duration storage, which involves technologies that can store energy for 10 or more hours, by 2045.

According to Newsom’s office, the state ran on 100 percent clean electricity for the equivalent of 51 days last year, with the grid running on 100 percent clean energy for some period three out of every five days.

Battery Fire Risk

But solar has its downside.

A fire erupted on Jan. 16 at Vistra Energy’s Moss Landing facility, which houses 110,000 lithium-ion batteries used to store solar energy. First responders were forced to let the fire burn until it ran out of fuel, sending a toxic plume of smoke into Central California.

Flames rise after a major fire erupted at the Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles south of San Francisco, on Jan. 16, 2025, in a still from video. KSBW via AP

Lithium batteries can ignite spontaneously with exposure to air or water, making their fires hard to extinguish with existing methods.

In August 2024, a Tesla semitruck crashed on Interstate 80, closing the highway for several hours while the battery pack reached 1,000 degrees, producing toxic gases and posing a public safety risk, according to authorities.

California legislators asked Newsom to back off his plan to ban combustion engines by 2045 after a diesel truck carrying six lithium-ion batteries caught fire and shut down another major highway in Southern California, also in August 2024. Thousands of drivers were impacted by the fire and road closure.