https://www.cas.cn/cm/202504/t20250415_5064078.shtml

According to a talk by Chen Haisheng, chairman of the Zhongguancun Energy Storage Industry Technology Alliance and director of the CAS Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, China has publish 20,025 SCI papers in the field of energy storage technology in 2024, , accounting for 49% of pertinent papers published worldwide, and has become the most active country in the world in basic research and technical research on energy storage.

In the fields of cold and heat storage, lithium batteries, sodium batteries, supercapacitors, the number of Chinese invention patent applications will exceed 1,000, and also in terms of international patents, China continues to rank first.

China has made several breakthroughs

• the 3.6 million kW/40 million kW-hour Fengning pumped storage power station,
• the 300 MW/1800 MWh salt cavern compressed air energy storage power station in Feicheng, Shandong Province,
• the largest single-unit 505 MW/1010 MWh lithium iron phosphate battery energy storage power station in China has been successfully connected to the grid in Inner Mongolia.

According to Chen Haisheng, a variety of energy storage technologies coexist, and different energy storage technologies are suitable for different scenarios. As for which energy storage technology can become mainstream, the market still needs to vote. From the current point of view, pumped storage and lithium batteries are the most popular.

2024 was a year of accelerated energy transformation in China. For the first time, installed capacity of renewable energy exceeded that of thermal power, accounting for 56% of the total installed capacity. The installed capacity of new energy storage will exceed pumped storage for the first time, becoming the main energy storage method. According to incomplete statistics, by the end of 2024 China’s installed capacity of power storage projects has reached 137.9 GW, accounting for 37.1% of global. The installed capacity of new energy storage reached 78.3 GW in 2024, accounting for 47% of global, with lithium-ion batteries dominating. Chinas new energy storage installed capacity is expected to exceed 100 GW in 2025 and in a conservative scenario will reach a cumulative 236 GW in 2030, in an ideal scenario nearly 300 GW.