Home battery installations reached 673 megawatts after incentives expired

In California, where households have been encouraged to pair solar panels with batteries since 2023, home storage is still expanding after federal incentives disappeared. Across the United States, homeowners installed 673 megawatts of battery storage in Q 1 of 2026, following record battery sales in Q 4 of 2025 after the looming end of the federal tax credit.

The market is holding up for a practical reason: electricity bills are high and rising. A battery, usually connected to rooftop solar, lets a household rely less on the centralized grid. That promise is strongest where expensive power meets supportive state policy, giving homeowners a reason to keep buying even after the federal discount has gone.

California shows the scale of that effect. The state accounted for around three-quarters of home battery installations nationwide in both 2024 and 2025. Hawaii, which has the highest electric bills in the country, created a new storage incentive program last year; BloombergNEF linked it to a surge of installations in Q 1 of 2026.

The contrast with rooftop solar is widening. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated long-standing tax credits that reduced the price of both solar and storage systems by 30 %. BloombergNEF expects residential solar installations this year to fall to their lowest level since 2020, while home batteries continue to climb.

So what, concretely? For homeowners facing rising utility bills, storage can reduce dependence on the grid, especially when paired with solar. For the U.S. power system, the stubborn growth of home batteries adds to a larger shift: large-scale batteries are also being built at a blistering pace, making storage an increasingly critical part of the electricity story.