Wood Mackenzie Says Four-Hour Batteries Beat Gas Peakers in 43 Markets, but the U.S. Prices Behind It Are Unpublished

Wood Mackenzie's 2026 regional cost reports find that four-hour battery storage costs less than open-cycle gas turbines in all 43 markets where both were modelled. The headline repeated on Oct. 8 by Solar Power World says "cheaper to install". The measure Wood Mackenzie used is levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), which folds in utilisation, financing, charging electricity and asset life. An install bill does not.

That difference is the first thing to hold on to. The second is that the most-quoted U.S. number is not in the report pages we could read.

The U.S. figure has no prices attached

Utility Dive reports that for a 2026 U.S. commercial operation date, four-hour batteries are 65% to 75% cheaper than new open-cycle gas peakers, depending on whether state carbon pricing applies. It adds that Wood Mackenzie did not publish exact prices, and that the range came from a spokesperson's email. A percentage with no numerator or denominator cannot be checked. The reader gets a ratio and no dollars per megawatt-hour on either side of it.

Ahmed Jameel Abdullah, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie, is quoted by both outlets: "This economic shift is decisive and widening."

What the regional pages give

The regional report pages give less than the coverage does. The Asia Pacific report, dated Oct. 1, covers 15 markets and up to 34 technologies, and puts China's four-hour benchmark at $58/MWh. Solar Power World gives the rest-of-region average as $134/MWh, which makes China about 57% below it, consistent with the "more than 55%" Wood Mackenzie states. The Middle East and Africa page says only that "four-hour storage now undercuts open-cycle gas", with no figures; Solar Power World supplies $120/MWh for 2026, falling 33% to $80/MWh by 2035.

1. Rest of Asia Pacific average134 $/MWh
2. Middle East and Africa, 2026120 $/MWh
3. Middle East and Africa, 2035 forecast80 $/MWh
4. China benchmark58 $/MWh

Source: Wood Mackenzie Asia Pacific LCOE 2026 report page (China); Solar Power World, Oct. 2026 (the other three)

These are modelled figures, and the bases differ: a regional average, a forecast year and a single-country benchmark. Solar Power World itself says almost all the figures are forecasts and that they are not directly comparable with each other. The chart is a list of what is public, not a ranking of markets.

Why gas is the moving side

The gas number that matters here is not the battery price but the turbine price. Utility Dive cites Wood Mackenzie's April 2026 analysis: gas turbine prices projected to reach $600/kW by the end of 2027, up 195% since 2019. Turbine backlogs at GE Vernova, Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi range from 35 GW to 116 GW. Wood Mackenzie attributes a supply-deficit cycle in gas investment, running through the late 2030s, to data center load growth.

To put the turbine figure in dollars: $600/kW on a 100 MW peaker is $60 million of equipment, and a 195% rise implies the 2019 price was about $203/kW (our arithmetic from the two published numbers). The battery side of the comparison has no equivalent published figure in the U.S. coverage, which is why the 65% to 75% cannot be rebuilt.

The chain runs like this: data centers raise demand for firm capacity; turbine makers sell out; the price of a new peaker rises; the comparison with a battery tips further. On that logic some of the "decisive" gap is a gas problem. Battery costs are not falling on a straight line. In Europe, Solar Power World reports installed battery system capex rose about 2%, the first increase in three years, as cell prices rebounded roughly 10% from their 2025 low, and lithium prices are expected to roughly double in 2029. The same report forecasts battery capex falling 12% by 2031.

For readers following the compute side of this, the power constraint is the same one behind Lambda's $4 billion raise, where a backlog of contracted capacity is only worth what can be energised.

Two different 43s

Solar Power World also reports that single-axis tracker solar is the lowest-cost new-build technology in 43 of 48 modelled markets, with onshore wind leading in five. That 43 is a count of markets where solar wins across all technologies. The storage figure is a count of markets where both a four-hour battery and an open-cycle gas peaker were modelled, and the article does not list them. The two counts coincide at 43 and measure different things.

Related hardware coverage: Ghost's $3,499 box for running local AI agents, which moves the same compute demand onto a desk instead of a grid connection.

What a lower LCOE does not buy

A four-hour battery supplies four hours at rated output, then stops. A gas peaker runs as long as it has fuel. LCOE per megawatt-hour delivered says nothing about a week of low wind and cloud, and Wood Mackenzie's own storage outlook carries a warning: a cost spike is expected after investment tax credits phase out from 2038, and storage LCOE is projected to fall just 10% by 2060 in North America. Tariffs, anti-dumping duties and import restrictions are pressuring near-term solar costs there as well, per Utility Dive.

What would change my read

Three things. Wood Mackenzie publishing the U.S. prices would let a reader recompute the 65% to 75%. A second set of independent LCOE figures that disagrees on the peaker side would suggest the result is driven by assumptions, not turbine prices. And a rise in the $600/kW turbine projection, or a fall in it as backlogs clear, would move the answer for reasons that have nothing to do with batteries.