China’s climate policies are forcing renewable energy developers to incorporate costly storage facilities into new solar and wind projects
- Some 4GW of new Chinese wind and solar farms worth US$9.9 billion are bundled with storage and other energy facilities, according to reports
- Most Chinese provincial governments require a bundling of 10 to 30 per cent of energy storage capacity for new large solar and wind projects, consultant says
More than 4 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar farms bundled with storage and other energy facilities worth a combined 66 billion yuan (US$9.9 billion) have been signed in the past week, according to official announcements and mainland Chinese news reports. They include one mooted by China Huaneng Group, one of the nation’s biggest power producers.
Most Chinese provincial governments require a bundling of 10 to 30 per cent of energy storage capacity for new large solar and wind projects, relative to their generating capacity, according to Lucas Zhang Liutong, director of Hong Kong-based consultancy WaterRock Energy Economics.
“Basically, they are forcing the renewable developers to use [profit] margins from the solar and wind projects to partially pay for the energy storage capacity,” he said. “Under the current market design, energy storage capacity is still not economical, [hence] the mandatory requirement to bundle.”
02:52
How does China generate its energy?
China Huaneng Group is building a 36.5 billion yuan wind-solar-hydrogen-pumped storage project in Qingyuan in northern Guangdong province. Shenzhen-listed software developer Runjian is working on a 3.4 billion yuan wind-solar-battery project in Nanning in western Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.