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Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, July 19th. I'm Zoe Thomas for the Wall Street Journal.

To meet the surging demand for electricity in the U.S.

Battery companies are looking to the sun.

We'll explain what this could mean for consumers.

And then, Ohio Senator JD Vance just joined Donald Trump's ticket as the vice presidential nominee.

But before he entered politics, he was in venture capital.

And for part of his career, he focused on bringing more investment to tech startups in the Midwest.

We'll tell you about his efforts and whether they've paid off. But first, investment in batteries to power everything from homes to manufacturing plants is booming.

Battery storage capacity in the U.S. has grown enough in recent years to be able to power many millions of homes,

according to S&P global market intelligence.

And some entrepreneurs are turning to the sun to charge up these batteries on cheap power.

Here to tell us more is our reporter Amrith Ram Kumar.

So Amrith, what sparked this boom in battery investment?

So much solar has been installed that power prices in places like Texas and California

tend to really drop during the day.

And so if you can collect some of that super cheap energy and store it in batteries and then dispatch it out in the evening when solar energy is less prevalent and power prices tend to rise, that's a really attractive financial opportunity.

B batteries are also in high demand just to stabilize the power grid.

Across the country, especially in the summer or after hurricanes,

...