By RenewaNews · Thursday, October 22, 2026 · 6 min read

BESS Beats Gas Peakers on Cost in 43 Global Markets, Wood Mackenzie Finds

Original illustration created for RenewaNews.

Storage Backlog at GE Vernova and Siemens Energy Now Tops $162 billion, Pushing Gas Turbine Prices Toward $600/kW

Gas turbine equipment prices have tripled since 2019, and Solmar Capital's October 9, 2026 analysis of Wood Mackenzie data forecasts they will reach $600/kW by late 2027, as GE Vernova and Siemens Energy carry combined turbine backlogs as high as $162 billion. For projects reaching commercial operation this year, the same analysis puts battery storage 65% to 75% cheaper than new-build open-cycle gas turbines in the United States. Batteries do not face that backlog. They ship in modules, assemble in months, and interconnect without a multi-year wait for a single large unit.

The same pattern shows up globally. A Wood Mackenzie report published by Energy Storage News on October 19, 2026 found four-hour battery storage now cheaper than open-cycle gas turbines in 43 modeled markets worldwide. Principal analyst Ahmed Jameel Abdullah attributed the shift to supply-side strain on gas equipment, noting that "gas turbine shortages and rising fuel volatility are driving up peaking costs, while expanding battery manufacturing continues to push storage costs down." In the Middle East and Africa, the firm forecasts four-hour storage falling to $80/MWh by 2035, displacing gas peaking on cost across every market in the region.

California's Battery Fleet Is Already Eating Its Own Spread

The sharper story sits in California's own market monitoring, and it cuts against the tidy version of the storage-beats-gas narrative. The CAISO and Western Energy Imbalance Market footprint held 25,700 MW of battery capacity by year-end 2025, a 42% increase from the prior year, according to the Department of Market Monitoring's October 15, 2026 update. During peak net-load hours, batteries supplied an average of 15% of California's load.

Net market revenue for batteries fell to $45/kW-yr in 2025, the same report found, driven by lower peak energy prices. The report does not give the prior-year comparator, so the scale of the drop cannot be stated precisely, but the direction is unambiguous: batteries are suppressing the very price spikes that once set their own returns. That is the underwriting question for every merchant storage deal being financed into 2027 — the fleet has grown large enough to compress the arbitrage it was built to capture, and the revenue model that justified the last wave of capacity is not the one the next wave will be built on.

That cannibalization shows up downstream in wholesale pricing. An SEIA analysis released October 22, 2026, found that solar and storage growth drove average wholesale electricity prices down 42% in Texas and 51% in California between summer 2021 and summer 2026. California's average wholesale price fell from $77.54/MWh to $38.32/MWh in inflation-adjusted terms.

Texas Figures Don't Agree on What "Installed" Means

ERCOT entered 2026 with 13.9 GW of installed battery capacity, nearly double the 7.8 GW it held a year earlier, and the fleet had passed 15 GW by mid-2026. A February 9, 2026 presentation to ERCOT from the Texas Solar Storage Association, however, put installed BESS capacity at 15,712 MW — a higher figure, reported in February, than either the January starting point or the "passed 15 GW" mid-year mark from Modo Energy. Neither source states its counting basis clearly enough to reconcile the two, and it is possible one reflects interconnected or queued capacity rather than capacity actually in service. What is not in dispute is the role: batteries are now the primary tool managing the Texas evening peak, charging on cheap midday solar and discharging after sunset, in the hours that gas peakers used to own. TSSA Executive Director Mark Stover told ERCOT the fleet had "dramatically reduced costs for consumers" by providing capacity when the system was most strained, and the presentation noted BESS is now the number-one resource in ERCOT's project development queue — ahead of gas, wind and solar.

The National Pipeline Is Shifting Toward Storage, Not Gas

Enverus Intelligence Research's October 21, 2026 outlook projects 1,080 GW of new U.S. power capacity through 2050, with battery storage leading every technology at 376 GW of additions. Principal analyst Juan Arteaga said natural gas remains important for reliability, but battery storage now accounts for the largest share of new capacity being built. Total installed U.S. capacity is projected to rise from 1,435 GW in 2026 to 2,284 GW by 2050 on that trajectory.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's August 7, 2026 data shows nameplate battery storage already at nearly 52 GW by mid-2026, following three straight years of 70% annual growth, with operators planning another 54 GW of additions over the next two and a half years, including 14 GW in the back half of 2026. California's Bellefield Solar and Energy Storage Farm is set to double to 1,000 MW of storage by November 2026, which EIA expects will make it the largest standalone storage facility in the country.

Globally, BloombergNEF revised its 2026 forecast upward to 188 GW/535 GWh of new storage deployments, a 45% year-on-year surge, according to an Energy Storage News report published October 22, 2026. BNEF now projects 3.1 TW of cumulative storage capacity by 2036. The firm's 2026 methodology included U.S. data-center storage in its global count for the first time, a sign that storage demand is no longer confined to utility resource-adequacy procurement.

Standalone Batteries Are Starting to Sell Without Solar Attached

An Aurora Solar survey published July 20, 2026 — a single vendor's sales data, not independently corroborated — found 47% of solar salespeople now report selling standalone battery systems with no solar attached at all, with attachment rates on new solar projects rising to 65%. If that pattern holds beyond one company's sales force, it marks the point where storage stops needing solar's permit and interconnection position to get built. No second data source in this reporting confirms the trend nationally.

Duration Is Catching Up to the Resource-Adequacy Role

Wood Mackenzie data reported by T&D World on September 22, 2026 put U.S. storage installations at a record 18.9 GWh in the second quarter, up 17% year-over-year, with average system duration reaching 3.5 hours — up from 2.8 hours, though the report does not state over what period that shift occurred. John Hensley, SVP at American Clean Power, said storage "can be deployed quickly, strengthens reliability, and helps the grid make better use of both existing and new generation." Longer durations matter because resource adequacy, not short-burst price arbitrage, is now the design target — the same role gas peakers were built to fill.

Where the Economics Still Bend the Other Way

Lazard's 2026 analysis, reported by PV Tech on July 14, 2026, found U.S. utility-scale storage costs have risen since "Foreign Entity of Concern" restrictions on Chinese battery cells took effect. The band Lazard cites alongside that finding — $170/MWh to $296/MWh for an unsubsidized 100MW/400MWh system — is dated to 2024, which predates the FEOC restrictions; no updated post-restriction cost figure appears in the reporting reviewed. Lazard still found storage holding its advantage, because gas turbine LCOE has reached 15-year highs over the same period.