When Winter Storm Fern hit Texas with sub-freezing temperatures in late January, it iced over roads and sent Texans looking for winter coats more often seen in New England.
Five years earlier, Winter Storm Uri had left more than 4.5 million Texans without power for up to a week. Hundreds died.
This time was different; Texas’s grid held. Battery storage systems across the state delivered almost 7,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity at critical moments, supplying roughly 9% of ERCOT’s total power during peak stress.
The Mid-Atlantic hasn’t faced a test like that yet. But it’s coming, as electricity demand rises and severe weather events increase.
The United States installed 18.9 gigawatts (GW) of battery energy storage in 2025, a 52% increase over 2024 and the highest annual total on record, according to the U.S. Energy Storage Monitor, a report from American Clean Power Association and Wood Mackenzie.
PJM, the grid operator serving 65 million people in the Mid-Atlantic region, has lagged far behind.
California currently has nearly 17 GW of energy storage, and Texas is set to surpass that this year. In contrast, PJM has just 400 MW of batteries operating, spread across 13 states.
That gap in our energy infrastructure is not an accident of geography or demand, but a product of policy choices that Mid-Atlantic state legislators can still influence.
The region remains behind despite a record year
Last year’s record U.S. energy storage growth was broadly distributed across states, rather than concentrated in any single market. Utility-scale installations led the way, with Q4 2025 alone delivering 4.9 GW — a 31% increase over the same quarter in 2024. Homeowners and the commercial and industrial sectors also posted record quarterly results for battery installations.
In total, the U.S. has now installed more than 50 GW and 144 GWh of cumulative energy storage since 2019. Wood Mackenzie projects that the country will install half a terawatt-hour of storage between 2026 and 2031 — a 250% increase over the prior five-year period. Annual utility-scale additions are expected to double between 2025 and 2030.
However, our region is not yet positioned to capture that buildout at the pace we need. One reason is that the current PJM market structure, designed around traditional generation methods, does not reward the full utilization of battery storage systems’ capabilities, particularly their fast response and bidirectional energy flow.
What’s at stake for the grid
A 2025 analysis by The Brattle Group modeled the PJM system through 2045. Brattle found that to maintain grid reliability, the region will need 16 GW of battery storage by 2032, and 23 GW by 2040.
Peak load in PJM is forecast to grow 19% by 2030. Increasingly challenged by data centers, electrification of HVAC and transportation, and advanced manufacturing, the power grid in our region does not have enough power-generating capacity in the current pipeline to keep up.
Brattle modeled a three-day winter cold snap without energy storage. With less than 16 GW of battery storage, the risk of “load shed” (read: brownouts and blackouts) rises substantially. That’s enough to violate PJM’s reliability planning standards and trigger cascading failures similar to those Texas saw in 2021.
The economic cost of that scenario to Mid-Atlantic residents and businesses: up to $1.2 billion.
Momentum is building in the Mid-Atlantic, but more is needed
For Mid-Atlantic consumers and businesses already absorbing sharp increases in PJM wholesale capacity costs, energy storage can be a stabilizing force for energy bills.
Five states in our region are working on or have now established energy storage deployment targets:
- New Jersey was an early mover in its 2018 Clean Energy Act, setting a target of 2 GW by 2030. The state launched the Garden State Energy Storage Program in June 2025, and this spring, the Board of Public Utilities (BPU) announced three project awards totalling 355 MW. The BPU also announced a new solicitation for 645 MW of stand alone storage or storage-plus-solar, with bids due later this summer.
- Virginia, in the 2020 Virginia Clean Energy Act, set a goal for 3.1 GW by 2035. This year, the House and Senate passed energy storage bills that would, among other things, require Dominion Energy Virginia to petition the State Corporation Commission for approval to construct, acquire, or procure at least 16 GW of short-duration energy storage capacity by 2045 and 4 GW of long-duration energy storage capacity by 2045. As of this writing, Gov. Spanberger has yet to sign the bill into law.
- Maryland set a goal of 3 GW by 2033. Gov. Wes Moore signed the Next Generation Energy Act in May 2025, launching two procurements totaling 1.6 GW. Round 1 produced five bids for front-of-the-meter transmission-connected projects. Awards will be issued in October 2026.
- Illinois has a new bill, the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, going into effect in summer 2026 which directs the state to pursue at least 3 GW of 4-hour discharge duration battery storage by 2030. The bill also has provisions to provide equitable access to energy storage for all households regardless of income
- Delaware passed a resolution in July 2025 directing an energy storage study and a series of pilot projects.
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other PJM states have yet to establish energy storage targets, a missed opportunity at a time when their ratepayers and businesses can least afford to fall further behind.
The path forward
Texas didn’t get its battery storage by accident. It got there because, in the wake of a disaster, state policy, market design, and investment signals combined to solve the issue. The Mid-Atlantic doesn’t have to wait for its own version of Winter Storm Uri.
Battery energy storage is an established, rapidly scaling industry already delivering measurable value for consumers, utilities, and grid operators across the country. Mid-Atlantic states need to decide whether their policy frameworks will capture that value, or cede investment and jobs to states that have already acted.
Accordingly, MAREC Action urges state policymakers across the Mid-Atlantic region to:
- Establish or strengthen energy storage deployment targets with clear, enforceable timelines.
- Fund and implement procurement programs that include long-term contracts and transparent eligibility criteria.
- Ensure the proposed “Reliability Backstop Procurement” allows for robust participation of storage and renewables.
- Design programs that address utility-scale, residential, and customer-connected storage markets.
- Push PJM to update its outdated market rules that prevent energy storage from competing on an equal footing with conventional generation and getting fairly compensated for the value it creates.
- Engage early on “Foreign Entity of Concern” compliance frameworks, so that state procurement programs don’t create unintended project barriers.