The US added a record-breaking amount of energy storage in 2025, according to a new solar industry report published Monday. The growth of battery storage across the US is a rare success story for clean energy during the renewables-hostile second Trump administration—and also a sign of how utilities may be thinking about reorienting electric grids as demand goes up across the country.

The new report, issued by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), follows another dataset released last week by Bloomberg New Energy Finance showing a similar boom in battery growth. In 2025, according to the SEIA report, the US installed 57 gigawatt hours of new energy storage to the grid, with new installations growing almost 30 percent over the year before. (As its name suggests, a gigawatt hour is a measure of energy stored over time.) That’s enough storage, the SEIA report claims, to power more than 5 million homes each year.

The report predicts that the market could jump another 21 percent by the end of this year, increasing by an additional 70 gigawatt hours in 2026 alone. These are monster numbers compared to less than a decade ago, when there was about half a gigawatt of storage on the grid in total.

Batteries have proven remarkably politically resilient. Tax credits for wind and solar were cut as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill last summer amid a large-scale attack on renewables from the administration, despite opposition from Republican lawmakers with clean-energy projects in their states. But battery tax credits were largely spared.

And despite Washington’s hostility toward renewable energy, batteries—along with solar—saw significant growth in some deep red states last year. One of the big renewable energy success stories of the moment is Texas, where solar met more than 15 percent of demand throughout the summer, beating out coal for the first time. The SEIA report predicts that Texas will overtake California this year to become the US state with the most gigawatt hours of storage deployed.

Jigar Shah, a managing partner at the advisory firm Multiplier and the former director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, points out that Texas’ independent and largely deregulated power grid—which operates much closer to a true free-market system than other grids in the country—has enabled solar and batteries to soar ahead of other options despite resistance in the White House. (Solar’s success story is so big that it does even seem to be reaching some voices on the right: Recent polling suggests that MAGA voters support solar, while Katie Miller, the influential former top communications official for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to whom White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is married, has been tweeting approvingly about solar energy in recent weeks.)

“Texas basically says, ‘I don’t care about your cultural bias,’” says Shah, who was not involved in the SEIA report. “‘These are the market signals. You guys do what you want to do. If you want to build new coal plants, great. If you want to build batteries, great.’ And it happened to be that batteries were most incentivized by their financial incentives.”

While batteries and solar are proving a killer combination in places like Texas, the majority of battery installations last year, the SEIA report found, were stand-alone ones not connected to specific solar projects. The growth of stand-alone storage is a good sign for grids that are increasingly stressed by skyrocketing demand.

On an average day, energy grids around the US use only about 50 percent of the energy available to them. This underutilization is by design; the grid needs a large amount of capacity for days when demand is at its peak. Installing batteries at all levels of the grid is one way to take advantage of the extra energy that’s not used during off-peak days so that it doesn’t go to waste.

Great iPad Accessories

iPad accessories are endless. Below, we’ve highlighted some of our favorites to round out your tablet experience, and you can find more in our Best iPad Accessories guide.

Zugu Case for $50+: This is our favorite folio case for the iPad for multiple reasons. It’s not only durable (complete with a rigid bumper), but it also has a magnetized cover that stays shut and a flap that allows you to position the screen at eight different angles. The case is magnetic, allowing you to stick it on the fridge securely. It’s also reasonably priced, comes in an array of colors, and has a spot for your Apple Pencil.

Satechi M1 Wireless Mouse for $30: We’re already big fans of Satechi’s accessories at WIRED, and this mouse didn’t disappoint. It has a comfortable ergonomic design, a sleek aluminum finish, and smooth scrolling. It has great battery life too—with a built-in lithium-ion battery, I’ve been using it for the past four months and have yet to charge it.

Mageasy CoverBuddy Case (iPad Pro) for $70: This case allows you to magnetically connect it to Apple’s Magic Keyboard case without having to take off the case each time. It feels durable and doesn’t add too much bulk to the iPad. There’s also a slot for the Apple Pencil Pro or the USB-C version. The company also offers the CoverBuddy Lite for the iPad Air (M2).

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

Logitech Combo Touch (10th-Gen) for $260: The Combo Touch (8/10, WIRED Recommends) comes with a built-in keyboard, trackpad, and kickstand, making it ideal for getting work done on your iPad. It’s also detachable, so you can easily remove the keyboard when you don’t need it. It connects via Apple’s Smart Connector, meaning you never need to tinker with Bluetooth or bother charging it. It’s also available for the iPad Pro (M4) and M5 (although it does add a bit of weight to such a thin tablet) and the iPad Air (M2).

Casetify Impact Screen Protector for $56: If you’re worried about damaging your iPad screen, I recommend this protector from Casetify. It’s super thin, has excellent touch sensitivity, and is mostly fingerprint-resistant (I’ve wiped some smudges here and there). It’s painless to apply—the company supplies a microfiber cloth, a de-dusting sticker, and wet and dry wipes.

Paperlike Charcoal Folio Case for $65: Paperlike is known for its screen protector, but the company also offers a great case. It’s designed to feel like a sketchbook, complete with a polyester fabric cover that feels lightweight and high-quality. You can also prop your iPad up at two different levels. It doesn’t come with an Apple Pencil slot, but there is a large flap closure that keeps it from falling out. I tested it with the iPad Air, but it’s also available for the iPad Pro (both sizes).

StayGo Mini

Courtesy of Twelve South

Twelve South StayGo Mini USB-C Hub for $60: Ports are limited regardless of the iPad model. This hub from Twelve South has an 85-watt USB-C port with passthrough charging, a USB-A port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack. If you have trouble fitting it on an iPad with a case, the included socket-USB-C-to-plug-USB-C cable will fix this.

Apple Magic Trackpad (USB-C) for $120: For a spacious trackpad, the Magic Trackpad 2 is a great choice. Instead of physical buttons, it has Force Touch sensors where you can feel different levels of pressure on the pad. With support for various iPadOS gestures, you won’t have to touch the screen as much. It automatically pairs with your iPad via Bluetooth and recharges with the Lightning port.

Logitech K380 Bluetooth Keyboard for $40: If you prefer an external keyboard, it’s hard to go wrong with the Logitech K380. It’s lightweight and portable and can be connected to up to three devices via Bluetooth (with dedicated buttons to switch between them). The keyboard is powered by AAA batteries, which lasted us around four months, so you don’t have to worry about carrying a charger around.

Twelve South HoverBar Duo 2.0 for $80: The HoverBar serves two purposes. You can mount it to the side of your bed, kitchen counter, or shelf (to view content comfortably and hands-free), or you can use the included stand at your desk. With the 2nd-gen version, you can now remove the arm from the clamp and attach it directly to the stand, making it easier to swap between both modes.

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Pure Storage has rebranded to Everpure. The one-time flash storage hardware supplier characterised the move as an “expansion of the brand” based on the growing importance of data management. It will coincide with the addition of functionality to increase visibility “inside” data and enhance customer control over datasets. 

Pure founder and chief technology officer (CTO) John “Coz” Colgrove summed up the company’s evolution from a provider of storage hardware to an ever-greater involvement in managing data.

“Everybody’s very focused on how to use their data more effectively, especially for AI [artificial intelligence]. They need to understand what data they have, where it is, what’s in the data, what the provenance of the data is,” he said.

“We’ve been around 16 years and started out completely focused on data storage,” added Colgrove. “As we started doing more with [Pure’s] Enterprise Data Cloud and Pure 1, we’ve moved up the stack to where we’re doing more around governance of the data, tracking the data, understanding the data, managing the data, rather than just storing it.”

Colgrove emphasised that Pure will “leave nothing behind”. It will still sell data storage products, but recognised that for the C-level executives in enterprises, the conversation goes beyond that.

“Conversation with customers is moving up to a higher level,” he said. “If you’re a senior executive, you don’t care about how many gigabytes a second we get out of this, whether it’s connected by Fibre Channel or Ethernet, is it NVMe, or RDMA enabled.”

“What you care about is, where’s my data? Who has access to it? How is it protected? What’s stored in each piece of data? What am I letting my AI use? What am I training my AI on? We’re focusing on these conversations around the data, how it flows through different systems, where it originated, what is actually in it, where it’s allowed to be stored physically in the world.” 

Pure already has some functionality in these areas. At its Accelerate event in June 2025, it launched Enterprise Data Cloud (EDC).

EDC effectively bundles existing Pure Storage architectural elements, which include its Purity storage operating system (OS), common to all the company’s arrays; Fusion, which allows discovery and management of storage resources; Pure1, which allows for fleet management in terms of performance and detailed management of resources; and Evergreen, which is the company’s consumption purchasing offering that allows for as-a-service procurement.

Now, with the rebrand to Everpure, the company promises more functionality to help customers understand their data, which will be released starting this year.

“New capabilities that we will come out with will look inside the data to understand what is actually in the data, so that then becomes data management and governance,” said Colgrove.

“We will add new capabilities and improve this for several years. We’ve shipped some of the basic capabilities already this past year in EDC. We will have a number of features coming out that support this direction in Pure1, and we’re putting more engineers on it than we have before.”

Pure Storage will begin trading as Everpure on the New York Stock Exchange on 5 March 2026.