There was a near-70% increase in capacity of operational energy storage projects in China paired with solar energy from 2018 to 2019, according to figures recently published by the China Energy Storage Alliance (CNESA).
The Alliance has just released a set of quarterly deployment figures analysing the energy storage industry around the world in 2020 so far, while also assessing the drivers for solar-plus-storage in 2019 and going forwards.
CNESA found that around 800.1MW of energy storage project capacity – including thermal molten salt as well as batteries and other technologies – was paired with solar in China by the end of 2019, an increase of 66.8% from figures taken at the end of 2018.
The Alliance’s in-house analysis team said 320.5MW of newly operational solar-plus-storage capacity came online during 2019 in China, a 16.2% increase on capacity added during the previous year. The vast majority of total capacity, 625.1MW, or 78.1%, was paired with centralised generation, with the remaining 21.9%, paired with distributed solar generation.
‘Solar-plus-storage model will become one of the primary models for energy storage development in the future’
CNESA chairman Yu Zhenhua and senior research manager Ning Na said that with solar in China reaching “near grid parity” and the industry moving from a subsidised to unsubsidised model of deployment, energy storage could help confront the challenges of integrating variable solar generation and putting energy on the grid at times when it is most needed rather than at the time it is generated.
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