Episode summary
The Battery Boom Moving From Electric Cars to the Power Grid
Wall Street Week
· · 12 min
Summary
Battery storage is emerging as the bridge between a weaker EV market and a stronger grid-storage market. The host argues that factories built for electric vehicles are finding a second life making larger batteries for homes, businesses, utilities and data centers, while federal tax incentives and domestic-content rules are pushing developers toward U.S.-made supply.
The episode centers on LG Energy Solution’s Lansing, Michigan plant, which is expected to exceed 35 gigawatt hours of annual battery-making capacity and supply both EV and stationary-storage cells. A guest from LG says the same manufacturing process and equipment can serve both markets, giving the company flexibility if EV demand rebounds. Research from Wood Mackenzie backs the policy-driven growth story, citing U.S. storage installations rising from 1.2 gigawatts a year to 19 gigawatts last year.
But the boom is not frictionless. The analyst says new sourcing rules are forcing supply-chain rewrites, and the U.S. still imported 59% of its lithium-ion batteries from China as of 2025. The episode concludes that battery storage can make renewables more reliable, but scaling still depends on labor, permitting, interconnection and continued government support.
Key takeaways
- The host says EV factories are being repurposed for stationary storage as EV credits ended and power demand from data centers and factories rises.
- LG Energy Solution says its Lansing plant can make both EV and ESS cells using the same process, which lets it serve whichever market has better economics.
- Wood Mackenzie says U.S. battery-storage installations jumped from 1.2 gigawatts a year to 19 gigawatts last year, showing rapid adoption.
- The analyst says new tax-credit sourcing rules will slow 2026 and 2027 growth before domestic supply catches up later in the 2020s.
- Qcells says domestic manufacture was the key reason for its partnership with LG on the Atlas project in Arizona.
Notable quotes
“President Trump has made no secret of his skepticism about government support for renewable energy”
“-The most significant improvement to the reliability and utility of solar renewable energy has been battery storage”
“-At full output, Lansing's expected to reach more than 35 gigawatt hours of annual battery-making capacity”
“The annual installations have gone from 1.2 gigawatts a year to 19 gigawatts last year”
“-That flexibility allows LG to serve both markets and to shift quickly from one to the other if the economics change”
How the episode opens
Westin: This is a story about unintended consequences. President Trump has made no secret of his skepticism about government support for renewable energy. And up to now, the sector has been limited by the lack of good ways to store electricity for when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.
But it turns out that the Trump administration's efforts to cut back on electric vehicles may be just what's needed to make real advances on wind and solar. Our colleague Ed Ludlow got an inside look at how makers of small batteries for cars are pivoting to make much larger versions for homes, businesses and cities. -Renewable energy, while an alternative to fossil fuels, has one major limitation.
It runs on nature's schedule, not the power grid's. Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, is helping to close that gap. -There's a lot of great generation sources that are cheap and green.
The challenge with them is they're not dispatchable. -The most significant improvement to the reliability and utility of solar renewable energy has been battery storage. Otherwise, it's dawn to dusk, and then you're out of power.
-That flexibility is becoming more valuable as data centers, new factories and spikes in electricity use increase the need for power that's available on demand. And even as the administration scales back support for wind and solar, batteries remain eligible for federal tax incentives, including an additional benefit for projects using US-made components. To get a first-hand look at where that domestic supply is coming from, we traveled to Lansing, Michigan, home to LG Energy Solution's largest wholly-owned U.S.
battery cell plant currently in operation. This is a really massive facility. -It's 2.8 million square feet, 226 acres on the site.
It's a pretty large site. And it's purpose-built. -Why is that important that it's purpose-built?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- battery storage
- ev demand shift
- power grid upgrades
- data center electricity demand
- supply chain china dependency
Companies and tickers mentioned
- TransGrid
- Qcells
- LG Energy Solution
Watch the episode
Watch “The Battery Boom Moving From Electric Cars to the Power Grid” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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