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How Batteries Got Cheaper and Made the Electric Grid More Reliable

The New York Times•December 05, 2025 at 11:15 AM•Full Content
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Gist

Lithium-ion batteries have become cost-effective and essential for stabilizing electric grids, enabling greater renewable energy integration worldwide.

LLM Summary

The article explains how lithium-ion batteries, once dismissed as too expensive and risky, have become crucial for modernizing electric grids by storing excess renewable energy and releasing it during peak demand. A pivotal early installation in Chile's Atacama Desert demonstrated their reliability, paving the way for global adoption. Advances in battery technology and declining costs have made them a key enabler of grid stability and renewable energy expansion.

Full Article Content

Energy & Environment |Once a Gamble in the Desert, Electric Grid Batteries Are Everywhere

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Andes Solar IV, one of the largest solar farms in Chile. The rapid growth of renewable energy is among the factors making batteries a necessity.Credit...

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!Ivan Penn!Ruth Fremson

By Ivan Penn

Visuals by Ruth Fremson

Reporting from the Atacama Desert and Santiago in Chile, Indianapolis and Los Angeles

* Dec. 5, 2025

Lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from cellphones to cars, are increasingly saving electric grids around the world.

Batteries as large as shipping containers are being connected to power lines and installed beside solar panels and wind turbines. They soak up power when it’s plentiful and cheap and release it when electricity use soars, helping reduce the need for expensive power plants and lines.

American researchers invented the lithium-ion battery in the 1970s and later showed that the devices could help the electric grid. But for a long time batteries made little headway because grid managers and utility executives dismissed them as expensive and risky.

One of the first breakthroughs came about 15 years ago when engineers at a U.S. energy company installed one of the first lithium-ion batteries tied to a grid in a desert nearly 9,000 feet above sea level in Chile. Challenging conventional notions of how the electricity system should be run, that team helped prove that batteries could help make electric grids more stable and reliable.

The concept of storing energy was not new. Thomas Edison developed alkaline nickel-iron batteries largely for industry and early electric vehicles. Various companies tried other technologies like sodium sulfur, which have not gained much traction. And some utilities have long pumped water uphill so that later it could be sent back down to generate electricity.

But those systems were relatively limited. The kinds of lithium batteries installed in the Atacama Desert in 2009, by comparison, are now being used around the world.

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