China has announced plans to support a “transformation” of its energy storage industry over the next decade— focusing on the development of an array of technologies including a pilot high performance lead-carbon capacitor battery system.
The national government said it wants to move existing R&D and development activities in the energy storage sector onto full-scale commercialisation.
To do this, the government is ready to introduce a range of policy measures backed up by financial support to ensure energy storage growth, according to a statement issued by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on 11 October.
The NDRC said China’s energy storage technology has already formed a base for “industrialisation”.
Now, the government is set to launch a number of energy storage pilot projects including high performance lead-carbon capacitors, a 100MW lithium-ion battery system, a 10MW/100MWh compressed air energy storage unit, a 10MW/1000MJ flywheel array system, large capacity molten salt storage devices, variable speed pumped storage and superconducting magnetic energy storage technology.
In addition, the NDRC said China is also working on a pilot 100MW vanadium flow battery storage power station.
However, the NDRC said China’s government is also calling for improvements in the standard and testing certification system for energy storage products.
In terms of battery development, the NDRC said the energy storage applications of distributed battery resources such as electric vehicles (EVs), telecoms and uninterruptible power supply “will be explored and expanded”.
The NDRC said China will continue to develop the country’s EV intelligent charging and discharging business and step up research in the secondary use of car batteries for energy storage.
