Fluctuating tariffs in China are wreaking havoc with US battery energy storage developers, coming on the heels of a massive reduction in battery prices and US domestic supply chain, industry experts told NPM.

China remains the chief market for US imports in the BESS supply chain for major components such as battery cells, to inverters.

The Trump administration bought the total tariff on China to 54% on April 2, then eventually raised it to 145% as of April 9, while enacting a 90-day pause on tariffs in other markets.

Paul Thienpoint, senior director of procurement for solar-and-storage developer BayWa r.e. told NPM in an interview that there had been a rush to get equipment imported ahead of tariff implementation.

“Now in the near-to-mid term, we don’t know where the tariffs are going to land and also it is unclear on if the domestic tax credit will remain in place through budget reconciliations,” added Thienpoint.

A solar developer added that it is easy to implement the added costs associated with the tariff and pass it on to the offtake in the form of higher PPA pricing, but that this can’t be done when it is unclear what the final tariff terms might be.

NPM queue data presently is tracking 86 pre-operational storage projects, across 10.86 GWs, whose construction started between September 2024 and March 2025, according to milestones tracked by NPM research. Developers with projects include the likes of Leeward Renewable Energy, Jupiter Power, RWE Clean Energy and others.

Domestic options

Since August of 2022, there have been 25 primary component manufacturing projects supporting battery storage that have come online, according to American Clean Power (ACP). This is in spite of the likes of KORE Power, which announced earlier this year that it would not be proceeding with its planned battery cell production plant in Buckeye, Arizona.

One viable US alternative so far has been e-Storage, a unit of Canadian Solar’s CSI Solar unit. E-Storage announced plans to establish a 6 GWh BESS cell, module, and packaging manufacturing facility in Shelby County, Kentucky where production is slated to begin at the end of 2025.

Aypa Power obtained battery supply and long-term service agreements with e-STORAGE for projects in California and Texas where construction is expected to commence on the projects in 3Q25. Strata Clean Energy also secured a battery supply agreement with e-STORAGE on its White Tank Energy storage facility in Maricopa County, Arizona but that project is not forecasted to start construction until 4Q26.

Aypa and e-STORAGE did not return messages seeking comment on this.

Last year, Gotion High Tech said it had begun producing lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries at a facility in Fremont, California and had designs on an Illinois manufacturing plant in Illinois with a target of 10 GWh of EW battery packs and 40 GWh of battery sells.

“Some organizations are proposing full domestic manufacturing within a single project site, while others are mixing both domestic and foreign components,” said Michael Conway, senior director of business development, energy storage at New Leaf Energy.

Conway estimates that pricing on a module such as DC Block is usually priced USD 25/KWh and USD 30/KWh higher as opposed to foreign units. Depending on the outcome of budget reconciliation, the developer would also get the benefit of the 10% investment tax credit adder for domestic content.

There is also the possibility of tariff circumvention, as the Chinese had sought to establish manufacturing bases in other Southeastern Asian hubs such as Vietnam. While Trump installed a 90-day pause on tariffs on countries other than China, the rates were still high.

Similar to the some of the concepts raised in the Auxin Solar case, the US Department of Commerce initiated an antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) investigation of “Active Anode Material,” a major component of lithium-ion batteries, from China. The United States International Trade Commission (USITC) determined in January 31 to continue its investigation of imports into China of which preliminary findings on antidumping were due on May 27 and preliminary countervailing duty determination due on March 13.

The Compromise

There is a lot at stake here in the supply chain as energy storage added 11 GW+ of capacity in 2024, and grid-scale storage installations are forecasted to reach 13.3 GW in 2025, and 31 states have currently storage under construction, according to ACP.

Thienpoint stressed that the IEEPA tariffs have come at the expense of an environment where battery prices have come down globally and have stabilized. Further stationary storage is reaping the benefits of EV demand drop as manufacturers focus more on their technology vertical.

“It is really critical that the OEM and the supplier have good tariff sharing language, that is pre-determined,” said Thienpoint, as “most OEMs can’t wear all the risk.”

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM US subscribers.

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