BESS Industry Buzz: Beijing’s manufacturing ban, ‘responsible’ data centre policy, LDES economics and more

Beijing ban ‘likely to prevent price war’

It has yet to be confirmed at the time of writing, but according to Reuters, by way of Chinese financial news outlet ‌Cailianshe, China is pausing approvals on new energy storage manufacturing projects.

James Frith, principal at energy tech investor Volta Energy Technologies, noted that the reported move follows China’s first-ever decline in storage deployments and the introduction of a sales tax on lithium-ion cells.

“The move is likely to prevent a similar price war to that seen in solar and EV cells,” Frith wrote.

See his post here.

Four competing bets in a sodium-ion future

Amid the excitement around sodium-ion (Na-ion), we should remember that not all Na-ion is the same, posted Kowtham Raj VS, a strategic technology partnership lead at EPC firm Larsen & Toubro.

There are “at least four competing bets on the future,” he wrote, from layered oxides (NMF) which are a high energy density contender for EV applications, to NFPP (lowest-cost, safest and longest-life grid storage play), NVPF (high-voltage, high-power and suited for niche premium applications) and Prussian Blue Analogues (PBA), which are based on abundant materials and enable fast charging but see continued manufacturing challenges.

See his post here.

Massachusetts sets ‘pretty clear rules’ on data centre energy use

Former US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm is an enthusiastic advocate for responsible data centre development in her regular LinkedIn updates.

Yesterday, Granholm welcomed Massachusetts Governor Laura Healey’s “leadership on data centres,” after the state administration issued a framework that covers cost, energy, water, air, noise, jobs and other impacts.

“For data centres over 25 MW, Massachusetts is setting some pretty clear rules: bring or fund enough new clean energy to cover your electricity use. Pay for the grid infrastructure you require instead of putting those costs on everybody else,” Granholm wrote.

See former Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s post here.

Waratah Super Battery getting back online

Waratah Super Battery in New South Wales, Australia, made headlines as a landmark project designed to buffer the grid from shocks under a System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) contract.

It then made headlines for the wrong reasons as it suffered a failure of one of the site’s giant transformers, taking it out of action just as it was going into operation. Yesterday, Energy-Storage.news reported that the system has reached its full rated output once more and today Nick Carter, CEO of Waratah Super Battery’s owner and operator Akaysha Energy put a personal touch on its return to action.

SIPS test #2 was conducted at 700MW, he said, during a “great day of testing up at the Waratah Super Battery.”

See his post from the project site here.

India mandate makes energy storage a ‘fundamental part of renewable project engineering’

A proposal from India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) that new ground-mounted solar and onshore wind projects must install energy storage equivalent to at least 10% of project capacity for two hours highlights that storage is infrastructure.

That’s according to Neeraj Kumar Singal, founder of Semco Infratech, a lithium-ion cell and battery manufacturing and testing solutions provider based in New Delhi. Kumar Singal said that what looks like a regulatory change on paper has “much larger implications.”

See the Semco founder’s post here.

Local and state-level permitting is a significant bottleneck for US renewables

Former Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) CEO Abigail Ross Hopper continues her tireless advocacy and her LinkedIn posts are well worth following.

This week, Hopper highlighted a study from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, which found that across 48 US states, 888 state and local laws restrict renewable energy development.

The industry must get much better at community benefit agreements and “grow our political power,” Hopper wrote.

See Abby Hopper’s post about the Sabin Center’s study here.  

LDES math doesn’t pencil, yet

Raafe Khan, energy storage and emerging markets head at the consultancy Camelot Energy Group, cited his recent interview with ESN Premium in a post on the economics of long-duration energy storage (LDES) in the US.

“Everyone in the industry agrees we need 8-, 10-, and 12-hour storage, but we’re still building 4-hour batteries. So I took the liberty of laying out the math behind it all,” Khan wrote.

“Under this structure with PJM Interconnection, taking a 100MW system from 400MWh to 800MWh costs ~$72 million in additional capex. Annual capacity revenue goes from ~$7 million to ~$8.5 million, based on the recent BRA results. That’s <5% incremental yield on $72 million of incremental cost

The ELCC ladder barely moves (~59% at four hours, ~71% at eight) while the cost curve goes straight up. So when people ask why the market won’t build long duration, the answer isn’t vision or courage. It’s structural.”

See Raafe Khan’s post here.  

More than 1TWh of battery demand in first seven months of 2026

Annual battery demand first surpassed a terawatt-hour worldwide in 2023. Since then, the time taken to reach that mark has shortened each year, according to Iola Hughes, head of research at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

It took just seven months of 2026 for battery demand to surpass the terawatt-hour mark, Hughes wrote in a post that also noted that while BESS market demand for batteries rose 28% in the year-to-date, China, which represented 60% of global demand in the sector in 2025, only represented 37% of 2026 demand so far.

See Iola Hughes’ post here.