The United States installed a record 18.9 gigawatts of battery energy storage in 2025, a 52 percent jump over 2024, according to the American Clean Power Association and Wood Mackenzie's latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor report. Every one of those gigawatts sits on a site that needed grading, foundation work, trenching, and crane placement before a single battery container went live. For excavation, grading, and heavy-lift contractors, BESS construction is quietly becoming one of the fastest-growing categories of site work in the country, and most have not yet positioned their fleet for it.

more on the grading side of this type of work, see our piece on solar farm site prep and the equipment financing case for grading contractors, and for the crane side, our spotlight on the Grove GMK8700 all-terrain crane for heavy-lift contractors.

The Scale of What Got Built in 2025

Fourth-quarter 2025 alone saw 5.8 gigawatts of new battery storage come online, with utility-scale installations accounting for 4.9 gigawatts of that total, a 31 percent increase over the same quarter the year before. New activity spread across 13 different states, not just the traditional leaders California and Texas, which means the construction opportunity behind this build-out is no longer concentrated in a handful of regional markets. Residential storage also hit a milestone, with more than 800 megawatts installed in 2025, a 75 percent year-over-year increase.

• 18.9 GW of battery storage installed nationwide in 2025, up 52% from 2024 (ACP/Wood Mackenzie)

• Utility-scale installations: 4.9 GW in Q4 2025 alone, up 31% year over year

• New storage activity spread across 13 states, broadening beyond California and Texas

• Residential storage installations grew 75% year over year to over 800 MW in 2025

• Forecast: 0.5 terawatt-hours of storage to be installed 2026-2031, a 250% increase over the prior five years

• Utility-scale deployment is expected to double between 2025 and 2030 in gigawatt-hours installed

What a BESS Site Actually Requires Before the Batteries Arrive

A utility-scale battery storage site looks, from a civil construction standpoint, much more like a solar farm or a small substation than a power plant. Pads need to be graded and compacted to support rows of battery enclosures and inverters. Underground electrical conduit and grounding systems need trenching across the entire footprint. Access roads need to handle heavy delivery trucks and, eventually, maintenance crews. None of that work requires specialized battery expertise. It requires the same excavators, dozers, wheel loaders, and compaction equipment grading and site-work contractors already run.

Where Crane and Heavy-Lift Contractors Fit In

Battery enclosures and inverter skids typically arrive as pre-fabricated units that are set by crane rather than assembled piece by piece on site, which creates a real opening for rough-terrain and all-terrain crane operators who can mobilize quickly for a set-and-move schedule across dozens of units on a single project. Developers moving at the pace the 2025 numbers describe, 13 states, record gigawatt totals, are not waiting for crane capacity to materialize; they are awarding work to contractors who already have the lift capacity financed and available.

The Policy Deadline Driving the Current Pace

Much of 2025's record installation pace was driven by developers racing to start construction before changes to federal investment tax credit eligibility took effect, a pattern Wood Mackenzie's own analysts flagged directly in the report. Wood Mackenzie's base-case forecast still shows utility-scale storage deployment doubling between 2025 and 2030, but its own high and low scenarios span a 36-gigawatt build-out by 2031 against one running 17 percent lower, depending on permitting policy and whether federal tax credit access holds. For a contractor deciding whether to finance equipment specifically to chase this work, that range is worth taking seriously rather than assuming the 2025 pace simply continues unchanged.

Why This Is an Equipment Financing Conversation, Not Just a Bidding One

Winning a BESS site-prep or crane subcontract typically means mobilizing equipment on a developer's schedule, not your own, often with only a few months between contract award and the ground-breaking date. Contractors who finance an excavator, grading package, or crane ahead of a confirmed contract are taking on real risk, but contractors who wait until a signed contract to start the financing process are routinely too slow to win the bid in the first place. Matching financing timing to the realistic lead time on a battery storage project, not the lead time on conventional site work, is the single biggest adjustment contractors moving into this sector need to make.

The C&I and Residential Side Is a Smaller but Real Opportunity

Community, commercial, and industrial battery storage installations added 77 megawatts in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, driven by state policy support, and residential storage is expected to contract slightly in 2026 as the federal Section 25D tax credit for homeowners expires. For smaller excavation and electrical contractors, C&I storage sites, typically behind a single commercial building or small campus, require a fraction of the earthwork of a utility-scale project but still need foundation and trenching work scoped and priced correctly, which is a more accessible entry point than competing for the largest utility contracts directly.

What to Do Before Your First BESS Bid

Talk to developers or EPC contractors active in your region before a request for proposals goes out, since BESS site work is frequently awarded well ahead of public bid announcements once a developer has a short list of contractors they trust to mobilize fast. Get realistic about your crane and grading equipment lead times against the industry's compressed construction schedules. For

Regulatory Uncertainty Is the Main Risk, Not Demand

Nothing in the 2025 data suggests demand for battery storage is slowing. The risk sits entirely on the policy side: tax credit eligibility, permitting timelines, and Foreign Entity of Concern sourcing requirements for battery cells and systems all factor into whether the industry lands closer to Wood Mackenzie's high case or its low case by 2031. Contractors financing equipment specifically to chase this sector should build that policy uncertainty into how aggressively they scale, rather than assuming the 52 percent year-over-year growth rate from 2025 is now the baseline.

A Sector Still Young Enough to Get Ahead Of

Battery storage construction has not yet developed the dense specialist-subcontractor ecosystem that solar and wind construction built over the past decade. Developers in the 13 states that saw new activity in 2025 are actively looking for grading, electrical, and crane contractors who understand the schedule and scope well enough to bid confidently, and the contractors who build that track record over the next two to three years are positioning themselves ahead of a market Wood Mackenzie expects to keep growing through at least 2031.

How This Differs From a Solar Site-Prep Contract

Contractors who have already built a track record grading solar farm sites have a real head start bidding BESS work, since the pad preparation, access road, and trenching scope overlaps heavily. The difference shows up mainly in electrical infrastructure density and crane scheduling: a battery site typically packs more conduit runs and more discrete enclosures into a smaller footprint than a solar array of comparable capacity, and the crane sequencing for enclosure placement is a scope most solar site-prep contracts never required at all.

Financing Terms That Match the Project, Not the Industry's Reputation

Battery storage is still new enough that some lenders price equipment financing against the volatility of the broader renewable energy sector rather than the specific, contracted civil and crane work a site-prep subcontractor is actually performing. Working with a financing partner who understands that distinction, and prices the loan or lease against your contract and your equipment utilization rather than headlines about the battery industry, is often the difference between financing terms that work and ones that do not.

The Takeaway for Fleet Planning

Battery storage will not replace solar, road, or general site work as the core of most grading and crane contractors' business, and it should not be treated that way. It is, instead, a genuinely new, fast-growing line of work layered on top of the equipment most contractors already own and finance, which makes it one of the lower-risk ways to diversify a fleet's workload into a sector that grew 52 percent in a single year.

BFC Equipment Loans finances and leases the excavators, dozers, and cranes that grading and heavy-lift contractors need to compete for battery storage site work. Visit our home page, start an application, browse equipment for sale, or subscribe to our blog for more equipment financing and industry coverage.