China Battery Storage Use Surges After Policy Shift, Ember Says
(Bloomberg) -- China is getting more use out of its growing fleet of battery storage stations after policy changes made the industry more market-driven, according to a new report from energy and climate think tank Ember.
Standalone battery storage systems averaged 299 cycles of charging and discharging a year in 2025, more than double the level in 2022, Ember analyst Biqing Yang said in the report on Thursday. Co-located systems, in which batteries are installed alongside wind and solar farms, also more than doubled their utilization to 199 cycles.
The gains reflect a broader shift in China’s battery storage industry. After years of requiring many renewable projects to install batteries, Beijing is increasingly relying on market-based mechanisms that let storage operators earn revenue by providing services to the power grid. While the earlier mandate helped the industry expand, it left many batteries underused because they were installed mainly to satisfy regulations.
“As the power system integrates more renewables, the true value of batteries to China’s energy transition is becoming undeniable,” Yang said.
China added a record amount of new battery storage facilities in 2025, ending the year with more than half of global capacity. Growth has continued this year, with installed lithium-ion battery storage reaching almost 150 gigawatts by the end of the first quarter, according to Ember. The country is targeting 300 gigawatts of battery storage capacity by 2030, up from 136 at the end of 2025, in addition to expanding its fleet of longer-duration pumped hydro storage to around 160 gigawatts from 66.
The government ended co-location requirements last year and most new battery storage projects are now standalone systems that can earn revenue through a variety of ways, such as by purchasing electricity when prices are low and selling it when they rise.
Still, China can do more to improve utilization as its systems still fall short of the internationally recognized benchmark of about 350 cycles a year, Yang said. If they had reached that level last year, they could have captured and stored an additional 23 billion kilowatt-hours of renewable electricity, enough to power Singapore for about five months.
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