China puts battery storage at center of renewable energy strategy

China has placed energy storage at the center of its strategy to make wind and solar power more reliable during the next five-year planning period, with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and National Energy Administration (NEA) jointly releasing the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) for Renewable Energy Development.

The document targets around 3.5 TW of total renewable generation capacity by 2030, including more than 2.8 TW of wind and solar.

China entered the new planning period with 136 GW/351 GWh of operational new energy storage at the end of 2025, up 84% in one year and more than 40-fold from the end of 2020. Average storage duration reached 2.58 hours. New energy storage capacity was also more than twice the country’s 66 GW of pumped hydro capacity.

The expansion has been accompanied by structural changes. Independent storage accounted for 51.2% of cumulative capacity at the end of 2025, while projects lasting four hours or longer represented 27.6%. Lithium-ion systems still dominated, with a 96.1% share. National average equivalent utilization increased to 1,195 hours, nearly 300 hours more than in 2024.

The new renewable energy plan does not provide a standalone storage capacity target for 2030. A separate national action plan requires new energy storage capacity to exceed 180 GW by the end of 2027. The frequently cited projection of more than 370 GW by 2030 comes from an industry white paper rather than the renewable energy plan itself.

Instead, the plan measures storage through its contribution to system reliability. By 2030, wind and solar projects, including source-side storage, should deliver average firm capacity equivalent to 8% of installed capacity. Their share of electricity supplied during summer and winter evening peaks should exceed 20%, around 10 percentage points higher than in 2025. China also plans to add more than 300 GW of reliable renewable peak-generation capability during the five-year period.

New centralized wind and solar plants will generally be required to achieve firm capacity of at least 10%, with projects encouraged to exceed 20% where conditions permit. The plan calls for stronger coordination between generation and storage, wider use of grid-forming equipment and more accurate multi-timescale power forecasting.

Storage will also be integrated into distributed solar, green power direct connections, source-grid-load-storage projects, virtual power plants and smart microgrids. Data centers are identified as flexible loads that could be coordinated with renewable generation.

On the revenue side, authorities plan to improve capacity payment mechanisms for both pumped hydro and new energy storage and gradually introduce compensation for reliable capacity. This signals a shift away from storage built primarily to satisfy renewable project requirements toward assets being paid for measurable grid services.

The transition still faces challenges. Storage revenues remain dependent on provincial market rules, while rapid construction may create underutilized projects if dispatch and capacity payments lag behind. Safety, system integration and the economics of longer-duration technologies will therefore determine whether China’s storage expansion delivers operational value rather than capacity alone.