---
type: source
title: "BNEF 2025 Battery Price Survey: Stationary storage LFP packs hit $70/kWh, 45% single-year drop — $100/kWh threshold crossed"
author: "BloombergNEF (about.bnef.com)"
url: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-fall-to-108-per-kilowatt-hour-despite-rising-metal-prices-bloombergnef/
date: 2025-12-09
domain: energy
secondary_domains: [manufacturing]
format: report-summary
status: unprocessed
priority: high
tags: [battery-storage, BNEF, LFP, grid-scale, energy-transition, threshold, cost-curve, stationary-storage]
intake_tier: research-task
---

## Content

BloombergNEF's annual battery price survey (December 2025) reported:

**Global average lithium-ion battery pack price:** $108/kWh (down 8% from 2024), all-time low.

**Stationary storage (the critical segment for grid applications):**
- LFP pack prices for stationary storage: **$70/kWh** — 45% below 2024 in a single year
- Stationary storage is now the LOWEST-PRICED segment across all applications (lower than EV packs)
- Lowest observed cell prices: **$36/kWh** (for LFP stationary cells)
- Lowest observed pack prices: **$50/kWh** (for LFP stationary packs)

**Average LFP pack across all segments:** $81/kWh
**NMC pack average:** $128/kWh

**Key drivers:**
1. Chinese LFP cell manufacturing overcapacity — intense competition at the cell level
2. Ongoing shift from NMC to LFP chemistry for stationary applications
3. Manufacturing scale reaching maturity for standardized grid-scale cells

**Competitive project bid data (from separate source, same search):**
- In 2025-2026 tenders, bids averaged **$66.3/kWh** (60 bids under $68.4/kWh)
- Most competitive all-in BESS project capex: ~$125/kWh (pack cost + BOS + installation)

**Historical context:**
- Lithium-ion pack prices are 93% lower than in 2010
- 2024 pack prices: ~$118/kWh (global average); stationary storage ~$127/kWh
- The 45% single-year drop in stationary storage is the largest segment drop in the survey's history

**Secondary BNEF headline:** "Stationary storage becomes lowest price segment" — notable because automotive demand historically drove battery cost reduction, but grid storage has now overtaken automotive on economics.

BNEF also projects further pack price decreases in 2026 based on near-term outlook, despite some raw material price upward pressure.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is a threshold event for Belief 9 ("Below $100/kWh for battery storage, renewables become dispatchable baseload"). The threshold Astra has been tracking has been crossed — not approaching, crossed. Stationary storage packs at $70/kWh and project bid prices at $66/kWh confirm this is market-real. This is the quantitative anchor claim the energy domain has been missing.

**What surprised me:** The 45% single-year drop. Previous years saw 8-12% annual declines. A 45% drop in a single year is a step function, not a trend continuation. This is driven by Chinese manufacturing overcapacity creating a price war in the stationary storage segment specifically. The "overcapacity → price collapse" pattern has been seen in solar panels (2011-2012) and is now repeating in batteries.

**What I expected but didn't find:** I expected to find evidence that the threshold crossing is triggering grid-scale deployment accelerations in the US. I didn't search for this specifically — it's a follow-up question. The BNEF report confirms cost; whether grid operators are actually deploying at scale despite regulatory/permitting constraints is the knowledge embodiment lag question.

**KB connections:**
- Belief 9 ("Below $100/kWh for battery storage, renewables become dispatchable baseload") — DIRECTLY CONFIRMED
- Belief 8 ("Energy cost thresholds activate industries the same way launch cost thresholds do") — supported; the 45% single-year drop is a phase-transition-style cost collapse, not gradual
- Knowledge embodiment lag pattern: even if packs are $70/kWh, grid integration requires operator retraining, regulation updates, and project development pipelines. The technology threshold has been crossed; the deployment threshold may lag by 3-7 years per the electrification precedent.
- Aligns with general learning curve / cost threshold framework used across all Astra domains

**Extraction hints:**
- Primary claim: "Battery storage for grid applications crossed $100/kWh pack price in 2024-2025, with BNEF December 2025 survey recording $70/kWh for stationary LFP packs — activating the dispatchable renewable energy architecture predicted by threshold economics"
- Secondary claim: "The 45% single-year drop in stationary storage costs (2024→2025) resembles the overcapacity-driven cost collapse in solar panels in 2011-2012, suggesting Chinese LFP manufacturing overcapacity is compressing costs faster than the historical 8-12% annual trend"
- Important scope note: pack cost ≠ installed project cost. All-in BESS project capex runs ~$125/kWh (most competitive) to $334/kWh (NREL benchmark). The $100/kWh threshold claim should specify "battery pack cost" not "installed project cost" — this is a significant scope qualification any extracted claim needs.

**Context:** BNEF's annual battery price survey is the most authoritative annual report on this topic. The survey is released in December each year. This is the December 2025 edition. Secondary sources (ESS-News, PV Magazine, TaiyangNews) confirm the same numbers.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)

PRIMARY CONNECTION: Belief 9 — "The energy transition's binding constraint is storage and grid integration" — and the $100/kWh threshold specifically
WHY ARCHIVED: This is a threshold-crossing event for one of Astra's key beliefs. The $100/kWh figure was used to define when "renewables become dispatchable baseload." That number has been crossed at the pack level ($70/kWh). This is the most significant energy finding in Astra's research to date — it validates a belief prediction with real market data.
EXTRACTION HINT: Extract two claims: (1) the threshold crossing itself with the $70/kWh figure and the BNEF source; (2) the mechanism (Chinese LFP overcapacity → price collapse → step-function drop vs. trend). Include the scope qualification that pack cost ≠ installed project cost, and that knowledge embodiment lag means grid deployment may trail cost threshold crossing by years.
