From "Mandatory Energy Storage Allocation" to a "10-Trillion-Yuan Pillar": The Value Rebirth of the Energy Storage Industry

In February 2025, China's energy storage industry faced an unprecedented "policy earthquake." The National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued Document No. 136, which clearly stated that "energy storage allocation shall not be a precondition for the approval, grid connection, and power access of new renewable energy projects," completely abolishing the mandatory energy storage requirement for renewable energy projects. The "policy talisman" that had supported an annual scale of tens of gigawatt-hours collapsed overnight. The industry stood at a crossroads: retreat to the starting point, or break through to achieve rebirth?

Market responses confirmed the strong momentum of industrial transformation. After a short-term adjustment in new installed capacity of domestic new energy storage in the first quarter of 2025, the industry quickly returned to a growth track. New installed capacity in the first half of the year reached 21.9 GW / 55.2 GWh, a year-on-year increase of nearly 70%. The proportion of independent energy storage in tenders exceeded 90%. The rapid recovery after this "earthquake" marked that the energy storage industry was accelerating from "scale dividend" to "value dividend."

At the start of 2026, a package of supportive policies was launched. On January 30, Document No. 114 clarified the capacity value of new energy storage at the national institutional level for the first time. The recent Two Sessions further set the tone: new energy storage has officially ranked among the six emerging pillar industries, alongside integrated circuits, aerospace, biomedicine, low-altitude economy, and intelligent robots, becoming a strategic industry prioritized by China during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. It is estimated that the output value related to the six industries was close to RMB 6 trillion in 2025 and is expected to double to exceed RMB 10 trillion by 2030. This positioning has completely redefined energy storage, upgrading it from a "supporting role" in energy transition to a core pillar of the national economy. The energy storage industry has truly entered a golden age of high-quality development.

Behind this industrial upgrading lies the triple resonance of policies, markets, and technologies. As the core support for cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and reliability enhancement of energy storage systems, electronic technology is becoming the key for enterprises to build core competitiveness. It also makes core technologies focused on by the electronica—such as semiconductors, connectors, and power management—critical tools for the energy storage industry to break through development bottlenecks.

From Chips to Connections: Reconstructing the Boundaries of Energy Storage Efficiency

After the withdrawal of the mandatory energy storage policy, the economic evaluation of energy storage projects shifted from "availability" to "profitability." System integration efficiency has become a key variable determining the levelized cost of electricity, and semiconductor devices are the underlying code for efficiency improvement.

Texas Instruments (TI) empowers the entire energy storage chain with analog chips and embedded processors. As a global semiconductor giant, TI is committed to enabling the energy storage industry chain from three dimensions: cell and battery pack monitoring, safe and reliable energy storage, and power conversion. Its high-voltage battery energy storage system portfolio for up to 1500 V can monitor the voltage of each cell, cell temperature, bus voltage, bus current, and insulation impedance, while protecting system availability to ensure safe operation. The high-precision battery management unit for 48 V to 1500 V energy storage systems adopts the MSPM0G3519 MCU—an 80 MHz Arm® Cortex®-M0+ core with 512 KB dual-bank flash memory and 128 KB SRAM. Its peripherals support 2 channels of CAN-FD and 3 channels each of I2C and SPI. The large memory and rich peripherals make it suitable for an MCU in the low-voltage BMS design. Against the backdrop of large-scale grid connection of "desert, Gobi, and arid" new energy bases, TI's chip solutions are becoming an "invisible engine" for cost reduction and efficiency improvement in energy storage systems.

Phoenix Contact focuses on electrical connections and intelligent power distribution for energy storage systems. Its high-current connectors, modular power solutions, and industrial Ethernet equipment lay a solid foundation for reliability in energy storage containers and industrial and commercial energy storage systems. The new generation of plug-and-play connectors for energy storage covers mainstream applications in residential energy storage and 1500 V industrial and commercial energy storage. Inheriting the classic "three-proofs and one-switch" function of the previous generation, it adopts a secondary locking structure with superior plug-and-play performance and stronger mechanical strength, enabling safer, more reliable, and more flexible connections for energy storage systems. Meanwhile, upgraded manufacturing processes reduce costs to meet the cost-performance requirements of energy storage systems.

Wuxi NCE Power empowers the efficiency revolution through power semiconductors. Compared with traditional IGBTs, SiC (silicon carbide) devices offer advantages such as high voltage resistance, high current capacity, high temperature resistance, high frequency, high power, and low loss. Wuxi NCE Power's IGBT products are precisely positioned for photovoltaic applications. Its seventh-generation IGBT products have entered mass production and supply, with customers including photovoltaic giants such as Sungrow, Deye, and GoodWe. The Trench FS Ⅱ IGBT series significantly reduces saturation voltage drop and turn-off loss by optimizing carrier injection efficiency and carrier distribution, thereby lowering device power consumption, improving system efficiency, and precisely capturing the growth dividend of photovoltaic applications.

Deep Integration of PV and Energy Storage: Differentiated Breakthroughs for Scenario Specialists

The Two Sessions 2026 clearly supported diversified technical routes such as long-duration energy storage, sodium-ion batteries, and grid-forming energy storage. Behind this policy orientation is the rapid fragmentation of energy storage application scenarios: large "desert, Gobi, and arid" bases require long-duration energy storage, distributed photovoltaics demand PV-storage integration, high-energy-consumption parks need valley-to-peak power utilization, and AI computing centers require uninterrupted power supply. A single technical route can no longer meet such "scenario fragmentation" demands.

Innoscience (Shenzhen) Semiconductor Co., Ltd. takes third-generation GaN (gallium nitride) power devices as the core, building full-scenario high-efficiency solutions covering photovoltaic inversion, bidirectional energy storage conversion, and PV-storage collaboration, becoming a technical benchmark in the deep integration of PV and energy storage. As a global leader in gallium nitride process innovation and power device manufacturing, Innoscience relies on 8-inch mass production processes and a full-voltage product portfolio (15 V–1200 V) to solve the industry pain points of "low efficiency, large size, and high cost" in PV-storage systems at the core device level, driving PV-storage from physical integration to efficient and intelligent collaboration.

INN100EA050DAD and INN100EA070DAD adopt the same Dual-Cool En-FCLGA 3.3×3.3 dual-cooling package as INN100EA035A, representing the industry's first drop-in replacement solution for silicon MOSFETs that directly improves system efficiency and power density. Under input conditions of 36 V to 80 V, they reduce system power loss by more than 50%. Innoscience's advanced Dual-Cool En-FCLGA package offers 65% higher thermal conductivity than traditional single-cooling packages, significantly improving thermal performance, reducing operating temperature, enhancing conversion efficiency, and further increasing power density while lowering BOM costs. This achieves maximum efficiency for solar microinverters, energy storage systems (DC input), and maximum power point tracking optimizers.

Intelligent Power Management: The "Energy Efficiency Butler" for the AI Computing Era

Competition in energy storage systems is shifting from "who can provide cheaper cells" to "who can deliver smarter energy management." The Two Sessions 2026 proposed "establishing a national low-carbon transition fund and fostering new growth points such as hydrogen energy and green fuels," while green power supply for AI computing centers has become a key application scenario. A single NVIDIA H100 server consumes up to 7 kW, making high-efficiency power management a critical link for cost reduction and efficiency improvement in energy storage systems.

Shanghai Bright Power Semiconductor (BPS) is seizing the high ground of power management efficiency in the AI era. BPS specializes in high-performance computing power products, with technologies covering communication routers/switches/base stations, photovoltaic energy storage, charging piles, and other fields. Against the backdrop of surging power consumption in computing centers, its power management solutions directly determine the economics and reliability of energy storage systems by improving conversion efficiency and reducing heat loss. In AI servers, the BPD93136 is a 16-phase 2-Rail controller compliant with the NVIDIA OVR16 protocol, supporting PWM-driven phase multiplication for power expansion. Paired with the dual-phase small-size BPD88550D, it saves PCB space while delivering higher efficiency and a current capability of up to 50 A.

Chuanglian Power Supply focuses on the "power heart" of energy storage systems—the reliability and intelligence of power systems. Against the policy backdrop of "accelerating smart grid construction and developing new energy storage," stable power supply and intelligent scheduling of power systems directly determine the operational efficiency of energy storage projects and grid support capabilities. The Chuanglian Power Supply PVT-350-X series 350 W chassis-type DC-DC power supply is a highly efficient and reliable power solution tailored for photovoltaic and industrial scenarios. It supports an ultra-wide high-voltage DC input of 300–1500 VDC, adapts to three output specifications of 24 V/28 V/32 V, with a typical efficiency of up to 91.5%–92%, and can carry a peak output power of 450 W for 10 minutes to meet dynamic load demands under complex working conditions. The product adopts a semi-potting process with excellent dustproof, anti-corrosion, moisture-proof, and anti-vibration performance, paired with 4 kVac isolation voltage and 1200 V SiC dual-switch MOS tube design. It has passed SGS PV module certification and CE, UL certifications, and can operate stably in extreme "double 85" environments. It is widely used in photovoltaic power generation, energy storage systems, charging piles, high-voltage inverters, industrial control, and other fields, providing stable and safe DC power support for new energy and high-end manufacturing scenarios.

Epilogue: The Opening of the 10-Trillion-Yuan Blueprint  

The underlying logic of China's energy storage industry has undergone a fundamental transformation: shifting from policy-driven initiatives to value creation, and evolving from a supporting segment into a pillar industry. The abolition of mandatory energy storage in Document No. 136 appears to be a policy withdrawal, but in essence, it raises market entry barriers—projects without real economic viability are quickly eliminated, while enterprises with technological pricing power gain greater space. The capacity pricing mechanism introduced under Document No. 114 has completed the institutional framework, expanding the revenue model for energy storage into a "spot market arbitrage + ancillary services + capacity compensation" framework. This new model now works in concert with technological advancements in SiC devices, intelligent BMS, and digital power systems. Meanwhile, on the scenario side, "desert, Gobi, and arid" bases drive demand for long-duration energy storage, AI computing centers create rigid demand for green power supply, and zero-carbon parks promote "source-grid-load-storage" integration. PV-storage integration evolves from simple physical co-location to intelligent synergy, with management granularity refined from the system level down to the individual cell level. Energy storage is elevated from a "cost item" to a "value node," and the vision of a 10-trillion-yuan industry is now transitioning from blueprint to reality. 

electronica Shanghai 2026 will take place from July 1–3, 2026, in Halls W1–W5 and N1–N5 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. The exhibition will expand to nearly 120,000 square meters, with plans to welcome over 1,800 high-quality domestic and international exhibitors, and an expected attendance of more than 70,000 professional visitors. The exhibition will concurrently host forums, including the 2026 Innovation Forum on Energy Storage Technology. Through product displays, technology demonstrations, application experiences, and industry exchanges, it will guide the future development of the entire new energy industry with a more professional perspective and a more authoritative platform.