In late 2023, investor optimism about long-duration energy storage hinged largely on the success of the solar and EV markets, an influx of Biden-era federal funding — and a widespread assumption that lithium-ion would be too expensive at eight-plus-hour durations, eventually making advanced chemistries more economical.

But as of early 2026, the market dynamics have shifted. Lithium-ion battery pack prices have plummeted to well below 2023 forecasts and interest rates have risen, making it harder to deploy capital-intensive new technologies. And counter-intuitively, lithium-ion batteries have emerged as the LDES tech to beat.

In an analysis of the LDES market published today by Sightline Climate, the top two LDES providers today globally are Tesla and Chint Power, both of which make lithium-ion batteries. 

The report analyses companies and their technologies based on “technology” (round-trip efficiency), “finances” (total capital mobilized), “deployment” (measured in post-FID megawatts), and capex.

Tesla’s eight-hour lithium-ion remains the technology to beat, boasting the highest round-trip efficiency, while leveraging the same global manufacturing base that already serves short-duration batteries.

That combination of efficiency, proven deployment, and falling costs makes the Tesla Megapack the benchmark that other technologies must beat on both price and performance, explained Lukas Karapin-Springorum, a research analyst at Sightline; the company has long dominated the market especially in the U.S., and its storage division has thrived even as its electric vehicle sales have plummeted. 

A much bigger surprise, Karapin-Springorum said, is Chint Energy — a Chinese OEM mostly focused on power conversion systems — coming in a close second.

“This is really the sign of the industry’s immaturity,” he explained. Chint’s spot on the list is partly the result of being chosen for one of China’s first major first eight-hour projects. That project gives Chint real, post-FID megawatts, Karapin-Springorum explained, which boosted its score in the “deployment” category.

Next-gen contenders

But the other companies topping Sightline’s scoreboard span a wide range of technologies, with Italian startup Energy Dome’s CO2-based mechanical storage system coming in third, followed by Highview Power’s liquid air energy storage and Hydrostor’s compressed air energy storage rounding out the top five. Close behind are both ESS’s iron flow batteries and Sage Geosystems’ pumped geomechanical storage.

Energy Dome’s high rank comes down to a mix of bankable projects, including one high-profile contract with Google, and good economics in the duration window regulators are most focused on: its 10-hour liquid CO2 system enables “intraday” projects that can soak up excess renewables and shift them to another time on the grid, Karapin-Springorum added.

Meanwhile, Energy Dome’s normalized capex is among the best in the sector, mostly thanks to a new project in India that comes in at around half the cost of its first-of-a-kind plant. 

When it comes to deployments, Highview Power’s liquid air energy storage currently leads the pack, beating out both Tesla and Chint Power in the category with about 60 megawatts post FID. Hydrostor, however, is likely to jump up in the rankings over the course of this year: It only has about 2 MW post FID today, but is developing a 200 MW project in Australia and a 500 MW project in the U.S., which — if they move into construction — together would make Hydrostor by far the vendor with the most deployed capacity.

The future of LDES

Today’s rankings are notably diverse in terms of technology types, but that likely won’t last long. Karapin-Springorum expects the industry to start consolidating in the medium term, based on where governments decide to lend support. 

One key barrier for LDES, he said, is that often a project is “too expensive relative to what it can get on the market, so it doesn’t get built.” In other words, the electricity markets still aren’t ready for LDES. If governments step in and provide long-term contracts, projects are more likely to reach FID, he added, pointing to projects in California and Australia as well as upcoming announcements in other parts of the world.

“I expect to see a small number of vendors really start to capture market share, because, like with many technologies, the vendors who deploy the first couple hundred megawatts start to come down their cost curves…will have performance improvements,” Karapin-Springorum said. “They’ll have lower capex, and will be a more mature technology that’s generally viewed more favorably by market participants.”

Eventually, there will be “a single leading vendor,” before their market share starts to splinter among vendors competing in that same technology class — as evidenced by the more mature lithium-ion market today.

“Long duration energy storage is going through a step change right now,” Karapin-Springorum said. As of January, there’s only around half a gigawatt of operational capacity outside of China. That said, Sightline is tracking up to 9.3 GW in contracts that are expected to be signed in the next five months — as much as 20 times as much capacity is currently online. 

Those projects will take several years to get built, but will eventually take LDES from essentially zero to tens of gigawatts overnight, he added: “That’s a large number by some regards, but compared to short duration energy storage, it’s still kind of a rounding error.”

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