For years, the largest buyer of batteries in China was not a power trader but a rule. Provinces required new wind and solar projects to include storage, often around 10 to 20 percent of capacity, as a condition of connecting to the grid. Qinghai pioneered the approach in 2017, and it spread until it was the main engine of storage demand.
On 9 February 2025, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration ended that engine at the central level. Document 136, the notice on market-oriented reform of new energy tariffs, stated that storage configuration should not be a prerequisite for approving new energy projects (SMM analysis of Document 136). The obvious fear was that demand built on a mandate would collapse once the mandate went.
The collapse that did not happen
It did not. The National Energy Administration reported 94.91 GW/222 GWh of new energy storage in place by the end of June 2025, up about 29 percent from 73.76 GW/168 GWh at the end of 2024 (NEA figures via TaiyangNews). For the full year, the China Energy Storage Alliance (CNESA) recorded 66.43 GW/189.48 GWh newly commissioned, up 52 percent in power and 73 percent in energy on 2024, taking cumulative new energy storage to 144.7 GW (CNESA DataLink via Energy-Storage.News).
What changed was the mix, not the volume. CNESA reports that independent storage projects, built to serve the grid rather than attached to a single wind or solar farm, led 2025 additions with a 58 percent share, displacing user-side projects as the main segment. Average discharge duration of cumulative capacity rose from 2.11 hours in 2021 to 2.58 hours in 2025, and CNESA projects it to reach 3.47 hours by 2030. Longer duration is what a grid that needs storage through the evening peak, rather than a compliance checkbox, actually buys.
How storage gets paid now
The replacement for the mandate is a patchwork of markets, and the companies describe it in their own filings.
- Sineng Electric, a storage converter maker, says new solar and wind projects no longer have to install storage, provincial spot power markets were almost everywhere by the end of 2025, and independent storage now earns from power price spreads and grid services and, since early 2026, capacity payments (2026 interim report, p. 18).
- HyperStrong, a storage system integrator, adds that capacity income depends on availability and performance tests, so a station that cannot dispatch when called does not get paid in full (2026 interim report, p. 31).
Provinces are moving at different speeds. Under their Document 136 plans, Shandong eliminated storage requirements while Yunnan and Guizhou kept them, and Carbon Brief found that only 18 provinces had finalised their pricing plans by 15 October 2025 (Carbon Brief analysis). A national action plan sets a backstop target of 180 GW of new energy storage by 2027, up from just over 100 GW at the end of June 2025 (Carbon Brief).
What the suppliers show
The suppliers' first-half 2026 reports fit the new picture: growth continues, but it is no longer mandate-guaranteed.
- CATL, the largest battery maker, grew storage battery revenue 87.54 percent to ¥53.26bn in the half, and cites SMM putting global storage cell shipments at about 486 GWh, up 93 percent (2026 interim report, pp. 10, 16).
- Sungrow earned ¥15.46bn from storage systems, about half its revenue, but its storage margin fell 7.49 points to 32.43 percent, which it attributes to new entrants adding capacity fast and prices falling (2026 interim report, pp. 34, 35, 42).
- HyperStrong says it has delivered more than 60 GWh of storage systems in total (p. 20).
What it means
Our view: the buyer of Chinese storage changed in 2025, from a compliance officer checking a percentage to a power market paying for dispatch, duration and availability. That favours integrators and operators who can trade power and pass performance tests, and it punishes the cheapest compliance box, which was the old market's winning product. The numbers to watch are not headline gigawatts, which the mandate used to inflate, but duration, independent project share, and whether provincial capacity payments scale beyond the early movers.
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