China is targeting a non-hydro energy storage installed capacity of 30GW by 2025 and grew its battery production output for energy storage by 146% last year, state media has said.
The statement from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration said the deployment is part of efforts to boost renewable power consumption and ensure grid stability.
The 30GW figure includes all storage processes using electrochemical, compressed air, flywheel and supercapacitor systems but not pumped hydro although plans to increase the latter substantially have also been reported.
The country is aiming for 50% electricity generation from renewable power by 2025, up from 42% currently.
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Wei Hanyang, a power market analyst at research firm BloombergNEF, said lithium-ion costs will come down to help China’s goals: “While the cost-learning curve is still relatively slow now, the 14th Five-Year-Plan (2021-25) has made a clear goal for the per unit cost of energy storage to decrease by 30 percent by 2025. This will hopefully accelerate the industry pace.”
Meanwhile, the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) reportedly plans to increase its capacity of battery storage to 100GW in 2030 from 3GW today, and do the same for pumped hydro storage from 26GW today. That is according to SGCC chairman Xin Baoan in a Chinese-language commentary published in the state-owned People’s Daily.
China overall is targeting 120GW of pumped hydro by 2030, according to the National Energy Administration.
If true, these 2030 figures would completely blow out of the water recent forecasts on installed storage power capacity in the Asia-Pacific region, like those in Guidehouse’ recent report, which pegged the figure at just 74GW.
As with other countries, pumped hydro is the vast majority of energy storage GW installed in China today.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has also recently revealed that China’s production output for lithium-ion batteries for energy storage reached 32GWh in 2021, up 146%. That is 10% of its total lithium-ion battery output, which was 324GWh, a 106% increase resulting in a market worth 600 billion Yuan (US$95 billion).
The country dominates the global lithium battery supply chain although Europe and the US are both making large strides to increase domestic production to be less reliant on importing from the Far East.
