China will accelerate the development of new types of energy storage during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030) to support the building of a new electric power system, according to a plan released on Friday.

The plan, issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration (NEA), sets a target of 300 million kilowatts of installed new types of energy storage by 2030, with an average storage duration of about three hours. It also aims to shift the sector from large-scale expansion to market-driven growth.

New types of energy storage refer to energy storage technologies other than pumped-storage hydropower, mainly including electrochemical, compressed-air and gravity storage.

The plan calls for new types of energy storage to participate fairly in electricity markets, and encourages renewable energy megabases equipped with storage to join cross-provincial power markets as a single entity.

It also calls for a refined pricing mechanism that reflects the value of stored power, with charging and discharging prices set through fair market trading.

The emphasis on market mechanisms comes as China's power market increasingly matures. Investment in new types of energy storage was initially policy-driven, relying largely on mandatory deployment rules and subsidies, but the sector is now shifting toward market-based mechanisms, Huayuan Securities said in a research report.

Xu Dongjie, deputy chief engineer of the China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute, called the 300-million-kilowatt target a prudent, science-based minimum target that meets system needs and supports a reasonable rise in utilization while giving the industry confidence and preventing investment-driven boom-and-bust cycles.

China leads the world in new types of energy storage, with installed capacity accounting for around 40 percent of the global total. By the end of 2025, China had built and put into operation 136 million kilowatts of new types of energy storage, with average storage duration reaching 2.58 hours, 0.3 hours longer than at the end of 2024, according to the NEA.