'Power up' for China's energy storage sector
In addition, some other regions including Shandong, Ningxia, and Qinghai have rolled out supportive policies for the power storage industry. Experts predict more support from local governments in the pipeline.
"Backed by government support and driven by strong market demand, China's power storage development is set for rapid growth. Such large market potential has certainly attracted numerous companies to take a share," Lin said.
In May, authorities passed the assessment of a breakthrough by China's leading battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd's in battery cycle life.
CATL also mastered technologies of dispatching in large-scale power storage stations. The company said that electrochemical energy storage plus renewable energy power generation is one of the company's three major development plans.
In August, CATL announced the company would raise no more than 58.2 billion yuan to invest in projects related to lithium-ion batteries and new energy technology research and development, including a 30 gigawatt-hour power storage cabinet and a 90 GWh co-production line of electric vehicles and power storage batteries.
CATL has partnered with China Energy Engineering Group Co Ltd in large-scale power storage planning, design, investment, construction and operation. It also cooperated with Kstar, a Shenzhen, Guangdong province-based company specializing in producing electronic and new energy products, Nebula Corp, an electronic and industrial equipment manufacturer in Fujian province, and new energy company East Group in Guangdong province to co-develop a power storage converter and system integration technologies.
Another battery giant, Gotion High-Tech, partnered with JinkoSolar Holding Co Ltd to explore the power storage market in the solar power sector. Eve Energy Co Ltd also announced it would invest in a power storage battery project with an annual output of 30 GWh.
Seeing rapid development of the power storage sector, industry experts warn of challenges and are calling for regulatory policies. "Currently the cost of power storage is still very high and the industry has encountered many technical barriers," Lin said.
Lin warned of excessive production of power storage facilities as manufacturers are expanding production capacity to tap surging demand.
"Safety of power storage facilities is another problem. There still could be potential dangers caused by lithium-ion batteries as they can cause fires or explosions due to technical or quality issues. The industry still needs to ramp up efforts to make breakthroughs in concerning technologies," Lin said.
"At present, about 90 percent of storage power is achieved through pumped hydro storage, which has a disadvantage of inflexibility. It is expected that the industry will see more various ways of power storage with the drop in the cost of lithium-ion batteries and other types of power storage batteries," Liu of CKGSB said.
