Forget EVs. Battery Makers Are Busy Bolstering the U.S. Power Grid.

The much-hyped transition to electric vehicles isn’t happening much in America, but another less-discussed transformation is rapidly in progress: the use of battery packs to store power on the electricity grid.

That is good news for South Korean and Japanese battery makers after President Trump recently banned new Chinese batteries from the U.S. grid.

Those companies invested in U.S. production for an EV boom, only to find an artificial-intelligence boom that is boosting electricity use. Battery packs can pump out their stored juice whenever demand requires and help the grid take on intermittent power sources such as solar and wind.

The U.S. Energy Storage Coalition, an industry trade group, says electricity stored in U.S. batteries could reach one terawatt-hour by 2032, quadruple today’s level and enough to keep Texas, California, Florida and Michigan running at peak power for four hours.

A decade ago, battery storage on the grid was virtually nonexistent. Then Chinese battery makers poured into the business with cheaper products, gaining overwhelming U.S. market share despite Washington’s trade battles with Beijing.

An order by Trump in late August upended the market by banning U.S. firms from buying or installing power-grid components, including battery storage, from adversaries including China.

“Energy security is national security,” said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers. “President Trump will not allow our bulk-power system to be susceptible to vulnerabilities from foreign entities.”

A Chinese government spokesman said Beijing opposed “overstretching the concept of national security to go after foreign enterprises.”

In Trenton, Mich., workers at a DTE Energy site are installing gray, rectangular steel enclosures—roughly the size of standard shipping containers—across a vast stretch of gravel. The boxes house server-style racks lined with thousands of battery packs.

The batteries are made by a South Korean company, LG Energy Solution, and use a less expensive chemistry known as LFP that relies on iron.

If all the batteries on the site release electricity at once, they can deliver 220 megawatts of electricity, enough to power nearly 40,000 homes, according to DTE Energy.

The Trump administration has yet to clarify how its order will be enforced, including whether it would extend to existing Chinese batteries. A White House official said the Energy Department was working on specific guidance.

Major U.S. firms are already shifting gears. In September, Nvidia certified LG Energy, Japan’s Hitachi Energy and Tesla as approved suppliers of battery-energy-storage systems for AI data centers. No Chinese firms made the list.

South Korean and Japanese companies have been building dozens of battery factories across the U.S. to claim federal tax credits for domestic battery manufacturing that date to the Biden administration. Among them is an LG Energy joint venture with Hyundai Motor in Georgia, which was targeted in an immigration raid last year.

These factories were initially intended to sell their batteries to EV makers. Instead, the demand is coming from electric utilities.

In addition to drawing from public grids, many AI data centers are directly incorporating battery-energy-storage systems to deal with fluctuations in power demand. The systems act as a buffer, ensuring stable power flow during spikes in electricity usage, and they can kick in quickly in an emergency.

LG Energy produces battery-energy-storage systems in Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, as well as in Ontario, Canada. It works with Honda in Ohio and General Motors in Tennessee. By the end of this year, it plans to secure more than 60 gigawatts of global production capacity in battery-energy-storage systems, including more than 50 gigawatts in North America, an LG Energy spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman pointed to U.S. policy and “the importance of reshoring manufacturing for strategic industries like batteries.”

In the first half of 2026, LG Energy’s share of the North American energy storage system market grew to 13.6% from 4.2%, according to battery-market research firm SNE Research. That put it third behind China’s CATL and Hithium.

Roughly 95% of LG Energy’s North American shipments were destined for grid-power use, SNE said. In October, LG Energy estimated that its third-quarter revenue increased 59% over the same period a year earlier.

Other battery makers are also seeking to fill the gap left by China. South Korea’s Samsung SDI said Monday it has signed an agreement with U.S. energy firm Alpha Omega Power to supply an additional gigawatt-hour of battery energy storage by the end of the year, expanding a deal signed last year. Production is set to take place at its Indiana plant, a joint venture with automaker Stellantis.

South Korea’s SK On in August signed a deal with U.S.-based NeoVolta Power to deliver 9 gigawatts of LFP battery cells over five years, to be produced at SK On’s plant in Georgia. Japan’s Panasonic has swapped out a part of its EV battery production lines in Kansas to make batteries for AI data centers.

“The Korean battery players, in conjunction with their partners in the American automobile sector, will likely become very significant, if not dominant, players in the U.S. market,” said Milo McBride, who specializes in clean energy and battery geopolitics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank.