China has reached 101.3 GW of new energy storage (excluding pumped hydro)
(Looks like the average depth being installed is about 2 hours)
Its very small but a good proof of concept:
Global South deployments of solar microgrids seems to be accelerating:
80,000 villllages to get minigrids in Indonesia.
Hopefully this brings down the cost and develops the expertise for other countries to join in.
(The article says they are targeting 10,000 by August 2025 which I am guessing is a typo but 🤞 for 2026).
1GW baseload power from solar and batteries. Build should take about 2 years (solar + batteries have excellent project predictability). Cost is $6 billion but with that lead time and confidence, the loan costs will be quite low (even lower if tranches come on line sooner).
With the plummeting costs of BESS particularly I think this will be the first of many.
China battery exports were 144GWh in the first 5 months of 2025 (of which only 3.4 GWh were destined for the USA). So we are probably looking at exports of 350GWh in 2025.
Year on year growth was 436%. It won't take many of those before they are exporting 1TWh / year.
A steady price of < USD 40/kWh by 2030 is looking pretty plausible right now.
#Solar minigrid brings light and hope to a #Goma neighborhood, offering blueprint for rest of #Congohttps://apnews.com/article/congo-solar-energy-goma-drc-72700d7dd98824a8007b658ba39d281e
@jchyip
One of the great things about #solar and #bess in the global south is that they are cheap and scale from domestic right up to large grid scale installations. So they offer an practical ladder from households through mini grids, grids of grids, and on to national infrastructure in easy steps with power delivered to people at each step.
Good to see other BESS technologies being deployed at scale.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/07/04/worlds-largest-vanadium-flow-battery-goes-online-in-china/
In a recent BESS auction the 4 hour systems segment the average bid was ~$60/kWh (https://www.mercomindia.com/china-record-low-tariff-battery-storage-auction)
In June 2023 NREL projected cost reductions of 4 hour BESS based on a 2022 benchmark. (https://www.energy-storage.news/li-ion-bess-costs-could-fall-47-by-2030-nrel-says-in-long-term-forecast-update/)
The red dot on the plot shows where the Chinese bids fall against NREL's projections.
Assuming I haven't bolloxed my like-with-like assumptions it looks like the industry analysts are making the same mistake with batteries that they did with solar.
