Since the start of 2026, the solar energy storage industry has witnessed robust growth, driven by favorable national and local policies, continuous breakthroughs in core technologies, and the concentrated launch of new products by leading enterprises. These factors have jointly promoted all-round upgrades of solar energy storage products, with market demand booming across both domestic and international markets. The industry has officially entered a new stage of large-scale and high-quality development, and solar energy storage products are gradually evolving from supporting components of new energy systems into core supports of the global power system.
Intensive Policy Implementation Activates Market Vitality of Energy Storage Products
National and local governments have rolled out a series of strong supportive policies to boost the healthy development of the solar energy storage industry. On January 30, the independent energy storage capacity price mechanism was formally clarified at the national level, which opened three major revenue channels for energy storage projects and successfully turned energy storage products from cost-bearing supporting facilities into profitable assets. Up to now, 9 provinces including Hubei, Shandong and Guangdong have issued detailed implementation rules, with a capacity price range of 0.1-0.3 yuan/kWh/year, providing stable profit expectations for market participants.
On February 27, new regulations issued by the National Energy Administration further relaxed photovoltaic grid-connection conditions, canceling the mandatory energy storage configuration requirement for new energy projects and the rigid 80% reverse load rate limit for transformers. In addition, the 2026 Photovoltaic Administration Regulations clearly defined subsidy standards for centralized photovoltaic projects, relaxed the proportion of surplus power grid-connection for distributed photovoltaic systems to 80%, and further expanded the application scenarios and market space of solar energy storage products.
Local policies have also been continuously strengthened to keep pace with national guidelines. Shandong Province, a key photovoltaic and energy storage base, encourages the adoption of advanced modules such as perovskite and heterojunction, and actively guides enterprises to promote the deep integration of photovoltaic and energy storage. Meanwhile, the Central China Energy Regulatory Bureau allows distributed photovoltaic and energy storage projects to participate in inter-provincial power transactions, effectively improving the economic benefits of related projects.
Comprehensive Technological Innovation, Multi-Dimensional Breakthroughs in Product Performance
In 2026, the core technologies of solar energy storage products have made remarkable and multi-faceted progress, laying a solid foundation for industrial upgrading. Semi-solid-state batteries have entered small-batch application in high-end energy storage scenarios such as large-scale commercial projects, while all-solid-state batteries, with an energy density exceeding 400Wh/kg and a cycle life of more than 10,000 times, are now tackling key mass production technical difficulties.
Sodium-ion batteries, with their unique advantages of low cost, abundant raw material resources and excellent low-temperature performance, have achieved large-scale commercialization this year, forming a "high lithium and low sodium" differentiated market layout that effectively reduces the overall cost of energy storage products. At the same time, flow battery technology has been continuously optimized, with an energy storage cycle exceeding 10 hours, which successfully solves the seasonal regulation problem of solar power generation and provides stable technical support for large-scale ground photovoltaic power stations.
In the field of intelligent integration, AI technology is deeply integrated into energy storage products, which can intelligently optimize charging and discharging strategies according to real-time power supply and demand changes, thus improving the full-life-cycle economic return of products. Digital twin technology is widely applied in the design and daily operation and maintenance of energy storage power stations, greatly improving system reliability and operation efficiency. In addition, liquid cooling technology has become a standard configuration for various energy storage products, effectively enhancing product stability and service life by achieving precise temperature control.
Enterprises Launch a Cluster of New Products, Full-Scenario Product Matrix Takes Shape
At the 14th Energy Storage International Summit and Exhibition (ESIE 2026) held in Beijing from April 1 to 3, many leading enterprises in the industry launched their latest solar energy storage products and solutions. LONGi, Sungrow, Envision and other well-known enterprises showcased their full-scenario photovoltaic-storage integration solutions, further improving the industry's full-scenario product matrix.
LONGi officially released the "Full-Suite LONGi ONE" photovoltaic-storage integration strategy, launching a number of upgraded products including OneBank 2.0 and OneMatrix 2.0. Among them, the OneBank 2.0 AC-DC integrated energy storage cabinet shortens the pre-commissioning cycle by more than 30%, greatly improving the deployment efficiency of projects. Sungrow globally launched a full-scenario energy storage converter platform and a new generation of "1+X" modular PCS, with power covering 3.45MW–12.5MW, and its PowerTitan 3.0 energy storage system launched in Europe can operate without derating at -40℃, adapting to harsh low-temperature regional scenarios.
Envision launched a 12.5MWh AI energy storage system equipped with AI adaptive PCS, and announced the official mass production of 790Ah prismatic wound energy storage cells, which have a cycle life of more than 15,000 times. Pylontech’s new PyOcean series large-capacity energy storage systems (6.25MWh & 8MWh) can reduce the total number of parts by 50% and the floor space by 38%, significantly improving project economy. In addition, other enterprises such as GoodWe and Hoymiles also launched scenario-specific energy storage products, further enriching the product supply system.
Market Prosperity Soars, Industry Enters the TWh Era
Driven by favorable policies and technological innovation, the global solar energy storage market has shown a blowout growth trend. According to the latest prediction by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a well-known international energy research institute, the global new energy storage installed capacity is expected to exceed 450GWh in 2026, with the cumulative installed capacity exceeding 1.14TWh, marking that the industry has officially entered the TWh era.
The secondary market has also responded positively to the booming development of the industry. On April 10, photovoltaic and energy storage related concepts continued to rise in the A-share market, with Yijing Optoelectronics and Deye Co., Ltd. hitting the daily limit, and the stock prices of leading enterprises such as Sungrow and Pylontech also rising sharply. In terms of enterprise performance, Deye Co., Ltd. expects its net profit attributable to the parent company in the first quarter of 2026 to increase by 55.91%-70.08% year-on-year, mainly due to the surging demand for household and industrial-commercial energy storage in overseas markets such as Europe and Southeast Asia.
Industry insiders pointed out that 2026 is a key turning point for the solar energy storage industry from the early stage of commercialization to large-scale explosion. In the future, with the in-depth integration of energy storage with photovoltaic, AI and digital technologies, the application boundary of solar energy storage products will be further expanded, playing a more important role in power grid peak regulation, industrial-commercial energy conservation and household energy self-sufficiency, and providing strong core support for the global energy transition and the realization of carbon neutrality goals.
