Battery storage has seen an incredible turnaround over the last decade, moving from a curiosity of the power grid to a potentially dominant tool in grid flexibility. Plummeting battery costs have bolstered the economic case for solar photovoltaics, when paired with batteries, as a baseload power supply source. Batteries' shifting role from mainly filling supply gaps at times of peak demand or absorbing excess renewable supply to one more fundamentally supportive of grid-scale power has potentially big implications for future gas demand — even in places where gas is cheap, like the US. Battery costs globally fell by over 90% between 2010 and 2025, mostly driven by economies of scale from electric vehicle manufacturing. That has enabled low-carbon power technologies like solar and wind — long derided for their inherent intermittency — to become much more reliable supply sources at scale. In California, batteries now supply more than 60% of hour-to-hour power-ramping needs, up from less than 1% just a few years ago. By end-2024, 47% of the almost 1,000 gigawatts of solar capacity waiting for grid connection in the US was paired with batteries, including 93% in California, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory data. Consultancy DNV projects that by the mid-2030s, roughly half of all new solar installations worldwide will be paired with storage, up from 7% today. By midcentury, DNV expects a similar proportion of total global solar capacity will be co-located with storage, up from 2% now. The Mideast, India, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will have more solar with storage than standalone solar by then, DNV reckons.