US Battery Capacity Registry (USBCR), DOE MESC quarterly status update 2026-04-15; DOE LPO conditional commitment tracker accessed 2026-04-30; WARN Act filings compiled by BlueGreen Alliance workforce tracker through 2026-03-31.
The event count is declining. That is the number most likely to be cited, and it is the least interesting number in this dataset.
The US Battery Capacity Registry logged 21 status-change events in Q1 2026 — 9 outright cancellations, 12 formal delays — against a Q4 2025 total of 28 events (11 cancellations, 17 delays) and a Q3 2025 total of 22 events (8 cancellations, 14 delays). By that measure, the rate of adverse events peaked in Q4 2025 and has since pulled back. The cancellation-to-delay ratio, though, has been rising steadily across the same window: 36% of events were outright cancellations in Q3 2025, 39% in Q4 2025, and 43% in Q1 2026. More events are now terminal rather than deferral. Simultaneously, the average GWh per cancellation event has risen from 0.74 GWh in Q3 2025 to 1.31 GWh in Q1 2026, as the distress pool has migrated from early-stage, smaller-footprint projects toward facilities that had reached construction commencement or equipment procurement stages before stalling.
Headline event frequency is down. GWh per cancellation is up 77% over the same window.
Two-Quarter Aggregate
Across the full Q3 2025–Q1 2026 window, the USBCR logged 71 adverse status events affecting 58 distinct facilities, representing 74.7 GWh of announced capacity and approximately $18.4 billion in committed or partially disbursed investment. Of the 71 events, 28 are classified as cancellations (permanent withdrawal of project or phase), 43 as delays (revised COD pushed by six months or more from the previously disclosed schedule). Twelve of the 43 delay events involve facilities that had already recorded one prior delay in the registry, suggesting a subset of projects is cycling through successive deferrals rather than resolving toward either construction or cancellation.
The WARN Act filing cluster is a useful cross-reference. State labor agencies recorded 34 battery-sector WARN filings between 2025-07-01 and 2026-03-31, covering approximately 6,200 workers across 19 states, per the BlueGreen Alliance workforce tracker. Not all WARN filings map to registry cancellations — some reflect workforce reductions at operating facilities — but 22 of the 34 filings are attributable to facilities with concurrent registry cancellation or delay events, which provides independent confirmation of the registry's event identification methodology for that subset.
Clustering by Facility Type
Cell manufacturing accounts for 18 of the 71 events (25% of events) but 38.2 GWh of the 74.7 GWh total at risk (51%). The GWh concentration in cell events reflects both the scale of cell facilities relative to upstream components and the fact that several of the largest JV cell projects entered delay status during Q4 2025. Module and pack assembly accounts for 14 events and 12.1 GWh — high event frequency, low GWh per event, consistent with the smaller capital footprint of pack assembly relative to cell manufacturing.
Cathode manufacturing logged 9 events affecting 14.8 GWh. Cathode events are disproportionately concentrated in facilities targeting LFP cathode active material production, where the competitive pressure from Chinese-origin material has been most acute on project economics. Anode events (6 events, 7.3 GWh) are predominantly graphite anode facilities; the synthetic graphite segment has seen the steeper attrition, with natural graphite anode projects showing somewhat better persistence, inferred from project milestone disclosures rather than directly confirmed by registry status.
Electrolyte and other upstream components account for 3 events and 2.1 GWh equivalent, a category too small for pattern inference at this sample size.
Sponsor-Type Breakdown: Event Rate vs. GWh at Risk
The registry as of 2026-03-31 tracks 112 facilities across four sponsor categories: startup-sponsored (41 facilities, 28.3 GWh of announced capacity), JV structures pairing an OEM with an Asian cell manufacturer (31 facilities, 89.4 GWh), OEM-owned (18 facilities, 34.7 GWh), and other sponsors including chemical companies, utilities, and project developers (22 facilities, 18.6 GWh).
Adverse event rates over the two-quarter window:
| Sponsor Type | Facilities | Event Rate | Avg GWh/Event | Total GWh at Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Startup-sponsored | 41 | 68% | 0.69 GWh | 19.4 GWh |
| JV | 31 | 35% | 2.6 GWh | 28.6 GWh |
| OEM-owned | 18 | 22% | 1.7 GWh | 6.8 GWh |
| Other | 22 | 32% | 0.44 GWh | 3.1 GWh |
Startups are disproportionately represented by event count and event rate relative to their share of registry facilities (37% of facilities, 39% of events) and dramatically overrepresented relative to their share of announced GWh (16% of announced capacity, 26% of GWh at risk from events). The event rate differential — 68% for startups versus 35% for JVs — controls for the fact that startups represent a smaller absolute GWh base, making it the more informative figure.
JV events read differently. JVs account for 28.6 GWh at risk despite a lower event rate, because individual JV events are nearly four times larger on a GWh basis than startup events. A single JV phase delay can move more GWh than a cluster of startup cancellations. The Apex Electrochemical Partners facility in Lordstown, Ohio — a 40 GWh NMC cell project announced 2023-09-15 by a joint venture between a US OEM and a Korean cell manufacturer — recorded a Phase 1 delay on 2026-02-28, pushing the 20 GWh first phase from a 2026-Q3 to a 2027-Q2 COD. That single event accounts for 20 GWh of the JV total. The Meridian-Hyundai Battery JV in Savannah, Georgia (30 GWh total announced, 2023-06-05) similarly recorded a Phase 2 delay on 2026-01-22, deferring 15 GWh from 2026-Q4 to 2028-Q1 while Phase 1 proceeds.
The Startup Attrition Pattern
Among startup-sponsored facilities, the cancellation-to-delay ratio is running at 54% — higher than any other sponsor class (JV: 36%, OEM-owned: 25%, other: 29%). More than half of startup adverse events are now terminal rather than deferral. Volta Meridian Energy Storage, a 4.2 GWh LFP cell facility in Gadsden, Alabama (announced 2023-08-14, construction commenced 2024-03-01), filed WARN Act notices covering 150 workers on 2025-09-12 and recorded a registry cancellation on 2025-11-03. The project had drawn $340 million in committed investment. Ironclad Energy Systems, a 1.6 GWh sodium-ion cell project in Decatur, Illinois (announced 2024-02-08), cancelled on 2026-02-14 after disbursing $47 million of $180 million in committed capital.
Startup cancellations in this window share a consistent profile: facilities that reached construction commencement but not equipment installation are the modal cancellation event. Projects that never broke ground are cancelling at a lower rate than this cohort, which suggests the attrition is not primarily a pre-FID screening failure but a mid-construction liquidity event — projects that passed initial capital commitment but could not sustain the cash burn through the construction-to-commissioning interval. This inference is based on milestone disclosure patterns in the registry and is not directly confirmed by sponsor filings.
Cascade Battery Materials, a 2.8 GWh LFP cathode precursor facility in Moses Lake, Washington (announced 2023-11-20), has not cancelled but revised its COD from 2026-Q2 to 2027-Q4 as of 2025-12-15. The company's December disclosure cited a
"phased approach to commissioning aligned with customer qualification timelines"
— language that sits alongside the countervailing signal that the facility's equipment procurement schedule, as inferred from public procurement filings, shows no activity since 2025-Q2. Whether the delay reflects genuine customer-driven pacing or a capital constraint dressed in commercial language cannot be determined from available data.
2027–2028 Supply Availability Implication
The USBCR as of 2026-03-31 shows 171 GWh of cell manufacturing capacity with a COD window of 2026 through 2028. Of that total, 38.2 GWh is in confirmed delay or cancellation status. An additional 22.4 GWh is in "monitoring" status — facilities that have missed disclosed milestones but have not yet filed formal status changes. That leaves 110.4 GWh with intact COD timelines as of the last registry update.
Intact COD timelines are not operational capacity. The registry's historical tracking of facilities that have reached COD since 2023 shows an average slip of 14 months between announced and actual COD for JV facilities and 22 months for startup-sponsored facilities. Applying those slippage distributions to the 110.4 GWh with intact timelines — and treating the 22.4 GWh in monitoring status as carrying a 60% probability of entering formal delay — the probability-weighted range for domestically available cell capacity reaches approximately 34–52 GWh by end-2027 and 78–104 GWh by end-2028. The Wood Mackenzie US Battery Manufacturing Outlook (March 2026) places the base-case figure at 48 GWh by end-2027, within the upper portion of this range; BloombergNEF's Q1 2026 US Battery Supply Chain Monitor is more conservative at 38 GWh, consistent with the lower bound.
Applying historical COD slippage and monitoring-status risk, domestically available cell capacity is estimated at 34–52 GWh by end-2027 and 78–104 GWh by end-2028, against BloombergNEF's projected US demand of approximately 140 GWh by 2028.
Against that demand figure, the gap implied by the lower end of this range is not a rounding error. The 2027–2028 window was the period when the announced capacity buildout was supposed to translate into operational output at scale. The accumulated data from Q3 2025 through Q1 2026 points to a bifurcation rather than uniform failure: OEM-owned facilities are holding at a 22% event rate, and Phase 1 JV capacity is largely proceeding, while the startup and early-JV-phase capacity that was supposed to fill the middle tier of the supply curve is thinning faster than the headline event count implies.
Adverse event frequency peaked in Q4 2025. GWh exposure per event has continued climbing, and that trajectory is what the 2027–2028 supply window will reflect.