Power outages have become increasingly common, and longer in duration, due to extreme weather and temperature events. Behind-the-meter (BTM) batteries are proving their worth, as they have become more than niche devices quietly supporting backup power during storms. These batteries now offer vital support in an increasingly volatile energy ecosystem.
BTM batteries are emerging as one of the most important sources of new grid capacity, as they are flexible, dispatchable, and available far faster than traditional infrastructure expansion. In a power sector defined by rising energy demand, climbing grid-congestion costs, and tightening reliability pressures, tapping into BTM energy storage has become not just valuable but essential for electric utilities. Today’s batteries (Figure 1) are proving that, when aggregated and coordinated, they can meaningfully support peak demand, reduce the likelihood of blackouts, and defer costly utility investments in firm capacity.
New program designs, such as Customer Battery Energy Sharing (CBES), represent an inflection point in the conventional energy paradigm. Electric utilities can learn from early deployments that are already demonstrating measurable reliability and resilience benefits. Likewise, the growing emphasis on collaboration among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and device interoperability, provides utilities with a viable path to grow customer participation at scale, adding even greater value to these batteries.