At six o'clock in the morning, on the Gobi Desert in Jiuquan, Gansu, Xiao Wang, the duty officer of Sunshine Power's energy storage station, is checking the charging and discharging data of the previous night. The jumping numbers on the screen surprised him a bit - this winter's earnings have doubled compared to the same period last year. What he didn't know was that in Beijing, thousands of miles away, a policy that changed the fate of the entire energy storage industry had just been implemented for one month.

A month ago, on January 30, 2025, China officially included grid side independent energy storage in the capacity pricing system, clarifying that energy storage and coal-fired power are "equally paid for equal work" - receiving capacity pricing compensation based on peak power supply capacity. This means that the energy storage industry has finally broken the single profit dilemma of relying solely on electricity arbitrage in the past, and now has a "safety net".

For the energy storage industry, this is undoubtedly a reassurance pill. For Sunac Power, this is more like a gift to its long established energy storage business.

Electricity prices support bottom line, 'those who can get more'

To understand the significance of the energy storage pricing mechanism, it is first necessary to have an understanding of the overall situation of new energy generation in China. In recent years, with the acceleration of global energy transformation, China's newly added power generation equipment capacity has grown rapidly, exceeding 400 million kilowatts by 2025, of which wind power and photovoltaic newly added equipment capacity account for more than 80%. However, new energy has strong randomness and is prone to consumption problems such as abandoned solar and wind power. It is necessary to build a certain scale of regulating power sources to smooth out power fluctuations. The solution lies in energy storage.

In the past, the development of energy storage relied on "low price charging and high price discharging" to earn price differences, while the new capacity pricing mechanism will first assign a "minimum fee" to energy storage before this process, greatly reducing risks. This minimum guarantee fee is the capacity electricity price. In the calculation process, it is not only necessary to convert the peak capacity to a certain proportion, but also to consider the discharge duration, which means more work, more pay.

The change in the electricity pricing system coincides with the global trend of energy storage development. According to statistics, in 2021, the global scale of large-scale energy storage added was 28.4 GWh, of which China accounted for 5 GWh; By 2027, this data is expected to reach 605GWh and 350GWh respectively, with domestic growth rates far exceeding the world's overall level.

A more reasonable mechanism, while encouraging the installation of energy storage projects, also puts higher demands on the technology of enterprises. After all, the discharge duration truly represents not the actual passage of time, but the comparison between energy storage capacity and power. The larger the capacity and the higher the power, the more conducive it is to increasing electricity prices. Ultimately, it depends on technology. This is the trump card of Sunshine Power.

In the semi annual report of 2025, Sunac Power disclosed that the company has recently released the PowerTitan 3.0 AC intelligent storage platform, with the plus version having an energy density of over 500kWh/㎡, which is currently the highest in the world. In addition, the company has pioneered the "AC/DC integrated" 10MWh fully liquid cooled energy storage system, upgraded stem cell power grid technology, and successfully won the world's largest wind solar hydrogen storage multi energy complementary Saudi NEOM project, helping many power stations such as the Taizhou Hailing independent energy storage power station to operate stably. Its strength should not be underestimated.

Profit skyrockets and performance increases significantly

The operation of Sunshine Power can be fully supported by financial data. In recent years, the performance of Sunac Power has made remarkable progress: between 2020 and 2024, the company's revenue soared from 19.3 billion to 77.8 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 41.74%; The net profit also surged from less than 2 billion to 11 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 54.17%. Entering 2025, while many photovoltaic companies have not yet emerged from the industry's cold winter, Sunac Power has once again completed a wonderful countercyclical performance. In the first three quarters, the company achieved a revenue of 66.4 billion yuan and a net profit of nearly 11.9 billion yuan, with year-on-year growth of 32.95% and 56.34% respectively.

Due to the fact that Sunac Power's business has always been parallel to solar energy storage, the development of energy storage business not only disperses the company's operational risks but also carries the shift of strategic focus during the pressure on photovoltaics. In recent years, the proportion of energy storage inverters in the revenue of Sunac Power has risen sharply, from 6.06% in 2020 to 40.89% in the first half of 2025, surpassing the 35.21% of photovoltaic inverters for the first time and developing rapidly.

Along with the growth of energy storage business, there is also the profitability of Sunac Power. After experiencing a slight decline in 2021, the company's profit margin quickly adjusted and entered a phase of strong growth. In the first three quarters of 2025, Sunshine Power's gross profit margin and net profit margin have reached 34.88% and 18% respectively, which is excellent. Energy storage has become the first pillar business of Sunac, with intricate connections to photovoltaics and a highly successful strategic transformation.

Deepening Going Global, A New Strategy

The profit growth of energy storage is not solely due to products, but also to the market. The unique feature of Sunac Power is that the company has a large amount of revenue from overseas and a high degree of globalization. Moreover, the overseas gross profit margin is almost twice that of the domestic market, which naturally sets it apart in terms of data. From 2020 to 2024, the proportion of overseas revenue of the company steadily increased from 34.23% to 46.62%, and in the first half of 2025, it exceeded the domestic market by 58.3%. In 2024, Sunshine Power's overseas gross profit margin reached as high as 40.29%, while it was only 20.91% domestically during the same period, with a significant gap.

Without a doubt, this is a double-edged sword. Whether it is the impact of geopolitical patterns or fluctuations in order volume, they may bring uncertainty to Sunac Power. Fortunately, the company has developed for so many years and has a very wise strategy in choosing to go global.

On February 5, 2025, Sunac announced that it will establish its first European production base in Poland, mainly producing inverters and liquid cooled energy storage systems to directly serve the European market. This is not only a milestone in the development of Sunac Power, but also an important event in the photovoltaic storage industry.

Why do you say that? Generally speaking, in the process of China's photovoltaic storage enterprises going global, the cost driven inertia strategy is "Made in China+Global Sales" or "Southeast Asian Assembly". However, if we want to deeply explore the European market, this logic clearly lacks consideration for localization. Poland has formed a relatively mature battery industry chain, and its logistics network is very developed. With this springboard, Sunac Power can enter the core European market and avoid the excessively high labor costs in Western Europe as much as possible, which is undoubtedly an important strategic leap forward. Keywords: Energy Storage Latest News, Energy Storage New Energy News

In the evening, the energy storage power station in Jiuquan entered the peak discharge period. Xiao Wang looked at the stable output power curve on the monitoring screen and remembered the new policy he learned during the morning training - the capacity electricity pricing mechanism will allow this power station to generate a stable income every month. He calculated that based on the current peak discharge capacity, this money is enough to hire two more colleagues. In the future, with the accelerated integration of resources and the expansion of overseas routes, top players represented by Sunac Power are expected to continue writing new legends on the global energy storage stage. Editor/Yang Beihua