Recently, the release of two policy documents has completely rewritten the value logic of the energy storage track.
In June 2026, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD), and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued Order No. 42, "Implementation Measures for the Minimum Proportion Target of Renewable Energy Consumption and the Responsibility Weight System for Consumption", which was officially implemented nationwide on August 1.
For the first time, this document establishes mandatory assessments from the electricity consumption end: each province must complete its annual green power consumption indicators; high energy-consuming enterprises such as steel, electrolytic aluminum, cement, chemical, and data centers are set with a minimum proportion of renewable energy consumption and included in normalized assessments. Enterprises that fail to meet the standards will be summoned for regulatory talks, notified, and recorded in the credit blacklist.
Unlike the past mandatory energy storage allocation for new energy power stations, Order No. 42 this time directly transfers the assessment pressure to the electricity consumption end. Enterprises need to independently allocate or lease energy storage to store green power and complete the indicators. Local power grids also need to deploy large-scale independent long-duration energy storage to solve the regional wind and solar power consumption problems and complete the provincial consumption weight assessment.
This opens up new incremental space for the energy storage track.
Shortly before this, on June 25, 2026, the NDRC and the National Energy Administration (NEA) issued the "15th Five-Year Plan for the Construction of a New Energy System", specifying that by 2030, the installed capacity of new-type energy storage should reach 300 million kilowatts. It also proposed to "promote innovation in the regulation methods of new-type energy storage and reasonably improve the utilization level".
Combining the two, Zhongke Yucheng Investment believes that the energy storage industry, especially the new-type energy storage track, will usher in long-term structural rigid demand dividends.
Why Energy Storage is Needed
At midnight, the wind farms in Gansu are running at full speed. Late-night wind is often the strongest period of the day, and power generation is also the most abundant. But at this moment, factories have stopped working, malls are closed, and most families have turned off the lights and gone to bed. The generated electricity is unused, and grid dispatchers can only order "wind curtailment". This is the temporal mismatch between power supply and electricity demand.
There are many similar scenarios, and photovoltaics face the same problem. This is when energy storage is needed.
Simply put, energy storage is like equipping the grid with a "large power bank", storing the unused electricity and releasing it during peak electricity demand.
There are many types of energy storage technologies. Pumped hydro storage uses the height difference to store water for power generation; lithium batteries rely on chemical reactions for fast response; compressed air stores high-pressure air underground; flow batteries use electrolyte tanks to achieve independence of power and capacity; flywheel energy storage relies on high-speed rotation for instant burst; and hydrogen energy storage converts electricity into hydrogen to achieve cross-seasonal transportation.
Among them, new technologies other than traditional pumped hydro storage are collectively referred to as new-type energy storage, including lithium batteries, compressed air, and flow batteries.
Over the past five years, the installed capacity of new-type energy storage has moved from the fringe to the mainstream, growing 45 times, and has become the absolute main body of China's energy storage increment.
In the past, this growth was mainly driven by the energy storage allocation demand brought by the expansion of wind and solar installed capacity. Today, a new variable is joining in.
The explosion of AI computing power has caused the power demand of data centers to soar. The power consumption per rack is advancing from 120kW to 600kW, equivalent to the electricity load of a medium-sized residential community. The superposition of the green power assessment pressure on data centers and the power supply pressure on the grid has turned energy storage from an auxiliary to a rigid demand.
But there is another trend worthy of more attention, which is quietly forming in the industry.
New-Type Energy Storage is Getting "Longer"
As of the first quarter of 2026, the average duration of new-type energy storage in China has been extended from 2.2 hours in 2024 to 2.58 hours. The installed capacity proportion of projects with a duration of 4 hours and above has reached 27.6%, an increase of about 12 percentage points from the end of 2024.
In March 2026, a more symbolic change occurred: the capacity proportion of 4-hour long-duration energy storage on the grid side surged from 25% in January to 63.7%, exceeding 2-hour standard energy storage for the first time and becoming the industry mainstream.
This is a signal of a qualitative change in the industry structure.
Why is the duration of new-type energy storage getting longer? The reason lies in the continuous increase in the penetration rate of new energy. When the proportion of wind and solar power generation exceeds 15%-20%, the power system's demand for regulation resources changes from "hourly" to "daily" or even "weekly". 2-hour lithium batteries can smooth out instantaneous fluctuations, but cannot solve the cross-day mismatch of "having electricity during the day and no electricity at night".
Long-duration energy storage, as an energy storage technology that can sustain discharge for more than 4 hours, is becoming the core direction of new-type energy storage evolution.
The China Energy Storage Alliance (CESA) expects that by 2035, the demand scale of long-duration energy storage in China will reach over 300GW.
Currently, the main new-type energy storage routes that can meet the long-duration standards are as follows:
Flow batteries, whose working principle is similar to rechargeable batteries, with the core lying in the electrolyte. During charging, the electrolyte is pumped into the stack, and chemical reactions occur on both sides of the ion exchange membrane, converting electrical energy into chemical energy for storage; during discharging, the reaction proceeds in reverse, converting chemical energy into electrical energy for output.
Its power depends on the size of the stack, and its capacity depends on the size of the electrolyte tank. To increase the energy storage duration, it is only necessary to enlarge the tank and load more electrolyte, with relatively low capacity expansion costs.
Vanadium redox flow battery is the most technologically mature and highly commercialized one among them. The advantages of this route are intrinsic safety (water-based electrolyte does not burn or explode), extremely long cycle life (up to 20,000 times), and millisecond-level response. However, the initial investment is relatively high, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is about 0.67 RMB/kWh, and it has low energy density and a large footprint.
Hydrogen energy storage converts electricity into hydrogen and uses hydrogen as the container for energy storage. The principle is divided into three steps: first, using surplus new energy power to electrolyze water, splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, which is equivalent to storing electricity in the chemical bonds of hydrogen; second, storing the hydrogen in underground salt caverns, high-pressure tanks, etc.; third, when electricity is needed, recombining hydrogen and oxygen into water through a fuel cell while releasing electricity.
Currently, the efficiency of hydrogen production by water electrolysis can reach over 80%, but the overall comprehensive efficiency of the entire process of "electricity → hydrogen → electricity" is only about 40%, meaning that more than half of the energy is lost during the conversion.
Theoretically, hydrogen energy storage is the most suitable technical route for cross-seasonal long-cycle energy storage, but the multi-step conversion efficiency is relatively low, and the initial investment cost is about 12,200 RMB/kW, so its short-term commercial feasibility is insufficient.
Compressed air energy storage (CAES), the principle is to use air as the medium to store pressure. It uses off-peak electricity to drive the compressor, compressing atmospheric air into a high-pressure state and storing it in the gas storage space, while recovering the compression heat; during peak electricity demand, the high-pressure air is released, heated by the stored heat, and then pushes the expander to generate electricity.
Since the power unit and the energy unit can be designed independently, increasing the energy storage duration only requires increasing the gas storage space. Therefore, the marginal cost of this route is low, which is also the core feature distinguishing physical energy storage from electrochemical energy storage.
CESA calculates that at an 8-hour duration, the LCOE of salt cavern CAES is comparable to that of pumped hydro storage and lower than that of flow batteries.
Data from BloombergNEF shows that in 2025, among the global installed capacity of long-duration energy storage, CAES accounted for 45%, making it the long-duration energy storage technical route with the highest proportion currently.
As of the first quarter of 2026, 14 CAES projects nationwide have been connected to the grid for power generation, with a cumulative commissioned installed capacity of over 1.5 million kilowatts, and a total installed capacity under construction and planning of over 54 million kilowatts.
Among the several technical routes, it is also CAES that took the lead in 2026 in welcoming the most weighty progress—the National Technology Invention Award.
Major Breakthroughs in Long-Duration Energy Storage
On July 8, 2026, the "Key Technologies for Large-Scale Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage System" by the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IET, CAS) won the Second Prize of the National Technology Invention Award. This is the first National Science and Technology Award in the field of CAES in China.
The reason this technology won the award is that it has completed systematic innovation at three levels.
First is the system principle.
Early CAES had two major defects.
The two traditional CAES power stations in Huntorf, Germany (1978) and McIntosh, the US (1991), both adopted a supplementary firing design. During energy release, natural gas was burned to heat the air, with efficiencies of only 42% and 54%, respectively, and generating carbon emissions.
The key leap achieved by the Chinese team is "non-supplementary firing". That is, by efficiently recovering the compression heat and using it to heat the air during the energy release stage, the entire system no longer relies on external fuel and operates with zero carbon emissions.
Second is the core equipment.
Compressors and expanders are the most core equipment of the CAES system, and there were no ready-made products available globally before this. The team overcame key technologies such as the full three-dimensional aerodynamic design of multi-stage compressors and expanders, and supercritical thermal storage heat exchangers, and invented ultra-high pressure ratio compressors and ultra-high expansion ratio expanders.
In February 2026, the team, jointly with Zhongchu Guoneng, developed the world's first and largest single-unit power CAES compressor, with a maximum power of 101 MW, a maximum exhaust pressure of 10.1 MPa, a maximum efficiency of 88.1%, and a variable operating condition range covering 38.7% to 118.4%, reaching the international leading level.
Third is engineering verification.
Starting from a 1.5MW experimental device, to a 10MW demonstration, a 100MW national demonstration, and then to a 300MW commercial operation, the gradual path has significantly reduced the risk from the laboratory to the engineering site.
The 300MW project in Yingcheng, Hubei, which was connected to the grid at full capacity in 2025, has a system efficiency of about 70%, with 100% domestication of core equipment, setting three world records for single-unit power, energy storage scale, and conversion efficiency.
The superposition of the three innovations has increased the efficiency from 42% of the traditional route to over 70%, reduced carbon emissions from existence to zero, and advanced the single-unit power from the hundreds of megawatts level to a larger scale.
The project has been authorized with 162 invention patents, ranking first globally in the number of patents in the field of CAES, and has achieved direct economic benefits of over 7 billion RMB. This is the reason why the National Technology Invention Award was granted to this achievement.
The team that completed the award-winning achievement is also the founding technical team of Zhongchu Guoneng (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. Founded in 2018, this company is also the core carrier for the industrialization of advanced CAES technology.
The core team of Zhongchu Guoneng comes from the R&D team itself. From basic research to equipment development, to engineering design, and then to power station operation, all are led and promoted by the original team.
This integrated model of "R&D as industry" gives it a unique efficiency advantage in the connection between technology iteration and engineering implementation. R&D personnel face engineering constraints directly, and on-site data is directly fed back into the optimization of the next-generation technology, effectively solving the common "two separate skins" problem between scientific research and industrialization.
The company currently has the full-chain capability for hundreds of megawatts-level systems, covering R&D design, core equipment manufacturing, engineering implementation, and power station operation. The systems and key equipment have achieved 100% independent intellectual property rights.
The 100MW national demonstration power station in Zhangjiakou, Hebei, which was put into operation in 2022, is the world's first hundreds-of-megawatts-level advanced CAES power station, verifying the feasibility of large-scale engineering for the first time.
In 2024, the 300MW/1800MWh power station in Feicheng, Shandong, was connected to the grid. With a rated design efficiency of 72.1%, it can achieve continuous discharge for 6 hours and an annual power generation of about 600 million kWh. During peak electricity demand, it can provide power security for about 200,000 to 300,000 households. It was the largest, most efficient, best-performing, and lowest-cost new-type CAES power station in the world at that time.
Currently, the total scale of the company's projects under construction and planning exceeds 6000MW, covering Ningxia, Jiangxi, Xinjiang, and other places.
At the operational level, the company officially started operations in 2020 and has completed multiple rounds of financing, with a cumulative financing amount of over 1.66 billion RMB. Investors include CDB Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrading Fund, Cinda Kunpeng, China Three Gorges Renewables, Zheneng Fund, CMB International, Zhongke Yucheng Investment, Legend Star, CAS Star, etc.
In March 2026, Zhongchu Guoneng was selected for the "China Unicorn Enterprise List (2026)".
The growth trajectory of Zhongchu Guoneng is almost synchronous with the rise of the long-duration energy storage industry.
And now the long-duration energy storage industry is at the intersection of three growth curves.
In terms of policy, there are the institutional assessments of the "15th Five-Year Plan" and Order No. 42; in terms of market demand, there is the huge rigid demand brought by the explosion of AI computing power; and in terms of technology, the National Technology Invention Award won by CAES is a clear signal: those technical bottlenecks that once choked the industry are being overcome one by one.
This means that long-duration energy storage is no longer a concept that needs to be waited for, but an industrial trend that is happening. As one of the routes with the most outstanding comprehensive cost-effectiveness, the path of CAES from demonstration verification to large-scale application has become clear. As the core carrier for the industrialization of this technical route, Zhongchu Guoneng's project implementation pace, cost reduction curve, and equipment domestication process will be the most direct window to observe this track. The subsequent progress is worthy of continuous attention.
As a private equity fund company focusing on investing in China's cutting-edge technology, Zhongke Yucheng Investment takes investing in industry leaders, high-quality projects, and excellence as its core philosophy. With cutting-edge technology projects from the institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as its core targets, and with the ultimate "project exit rate" and "return on investment" as its core pursuit, it is committed to becoming a benchmark institution in the field of cutting-edge technology investment, creating value with outstanding scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors.