94GWh: Chinese enterprises account for over 90% of overseas energy storage orders. Amid the contract signing spree, there are still tough battles to fight.
Energy storage orders in Q3 hit 94GWh, with overseas contracts accounting for over 90%, capacity is twice the demand, and the risk of fulfilling overseas orders is extremely high.
In the third quarter of 2026, Chinese energy storage enterprises have delivered an exciting report card that also hides hidden concerns. According to statistics from TrendForce Energy Storage & PV Observation, the total disclosed energy storage system orders of Chinese energy storage enterprises in Q3 are about 94GWh, of which the disclosed signed orders are about 74GWh, and the overseas signed orders are about 67.8GWh, accounting for 93%. BYD won a single 11.275GWh order from Masdar in the UAE, Gotion High-Tech signed a 6GWh order in Saudi Arabia, and Sungrow Power secured another large 7.5GWh order in the UAE.
In the first half of 2026, the global shipment of energy storage batteries reached 461.3GWh, and Chinese enterprises took all the top 10 positions in global shipment rankings. The production capacity side almost monopolizes the whole world, while the demand side is heavily dependent on overseas markets. The newly commissioned installed capacity of new-type energy storage in China decreased by 18% year-on-year, the total planned production capacity is close to 2000GWh while the actual global demand is only 1026GWh. The threefold scissors difference is the most noteworthy part of this report card.
01
More and more GWh-level large orders are signed
While domestic demand remains in a "dormant state"
Among the signed orders in Q3, there are 19 orders of 1GWh and above, totaling 62.2GWh, accounting for 84% of all signed orders. The European market contributed 31.2GWh, and the Middle East market contributed 21.3GWh, the two together account for more than 70%. This is not the "impulse to go global" of individual enterprises, but the whole industry has placed its core focus on overseas markets.
In the first half of 2026, the newly commissioned installed capacity of new-type energy storage in China reached 21.81GW/58.60GWh, down 18% and 16% year-on-year respectively. But in the same period, the scale of centralized procurement and framework bidding for energy storage systems reached 80.16GWh, up 95% year-on-year. The installed capacity decreased while the bidding volume increased sharply, what is hidden behind this set of data?
A sales head of a southern Chinese energy storage enterprise said privately that the current domestic project bidding has "such fierce price competition that no one can make a profit", more than a dozen enterprises compete for a single 100MWh-level project, and quotations are often below the cost line. "Going global is the only way to survive, staying in the domestic market means waiting for bankruptcy."
Data confirms this anxiety: the total planned production capacity of domestic energy storage cells in 2026 is close to 2000GWh, while the actual global demand is only 1026GWh, the production capacity is almost double the excess demand. The capacity utilization rate of small and medium-sized battery manufacturers is less than 20%, but Deng Song, Chief Marketing Officer of Zenergy Tech, pointed out that "leading energy storage cells are still in extremely short supply". The coexistence of nominal overcapacity and effective capacity shortage is the epitome of distorted supply structure.
Why is the domestic market "dormant"? The core reason is that the profit model of energy storage power stations has not been fully established. Taking an independent energy storage power station of 100MW/200MWh in Jiangsu as an example, its total revenue in 2025 was 27.25 million yuan. But Jiangsu is one of the provinces with the most mature spot electricity market in China. Calculation from CITIC Construction Investment shows that the IRR of independent energy storage power stations under the Hebei model and Inner Mongolia model is only 6.2% and 14.8% respectively. Energy storage power stations make profits from policy support rather than market operations. Once the policy changes, demand will plummet.
The deeper problem lies in the asset side. At present, only about one third of the energy storage projects in the market can make stable profits, one third are hovering around the break-even line, and the remaining one third have already suffered substantial losses. A large number of existing 2-hour short-term independent energy storage projects, past mandatory energy storage allocation projects for new energy, and low-bid projects without professional operation teams, these three types of assets are very likely to turn from "new energy assets" into "non-performing assets" on bank accounts in the next few years.
02
Europe and the Middle East are "big payers"
But also "risk zones"
The destinations of Chinese enterprises' global expansion are highly concentrated: Europe accounts for 42%, the Middle East accounts for 28.7%, Asia-Pacific accounts for 14.6%, and the Americas only accounts for 1.94GWh. On the surface, it is a "globalized layout", but in fact, eggs are placed in only two baskets.
The driving logic of the European market is the energy transition policy plus electricity price fluctuations, but the compliance threshold is rising rapidly. In early September 2026, a 40-foot dangerous goods container loaded with Chinese-produced energy storage systems was stranded at the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands for more than ten days. The reason was neither tariff nor quality problem, but the sustainability compliance documents attached to the goods failed to meet the EU access requirements: the carbon footprint statement was not calculated according to the unified EU methodology, the renewable electricity use certificates could not correspond to specific production batches, and the traceability materials for lithium, nickel and cobalt had gaps.
This is by no means an isolated case. According to industry estimates, since August 2026, more than 10% of the arrived energy storage cabinets have triggered the re-examination of sustainability documents, and the probability of being selected for inspection is significantly higher for shipments from small and medium-sized integrators, new product models and batches imported into the EU for the first time. Once entering the re-examination procedure, it takes 7 to 14 working days to release in fast cases, and it is not uncommon for the process to be delayed to three or four weeks if supplementary materials or new reports issued by third parties are required. The EU Battery Regulation requires batteries to be equipped with a digital "battery passport" by February 18, 2027, but the carbon footprint statement for industrial batteries with a capacity of more than 2kWh has taken effect since February 18, 2026, becoming a mandatory access requirement.
Compliance capability is replacing price advantage and becoming the watershed for enterprises to stay in the European market. Leading large manufacturers have a much lower proportion of being selected for re-examination because their relevant pre-submitted materials are complete. Small and medium-sized integrators have a much higher proportion of being selected for re-examination than leading enterprises due to incomplete pre-submitted materials and missing supply chain data. The compliance threshold itself is accelerating industry differentiation.
In the Middle East, oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are investing petrodollars in new energy. Gotion High-Tech won the core 6GWh order for Saudi Arabia's first large-scale battery energy storage project. After the world's largest 7.8GWh energy storage project in Saudi Arabia was implemented, Sungrow Power secured another 7.5GWh large order in the UAE, supplying PowerTitan 3.0 liquid-cooled energy storage systems for Masdar's RTC project, which requires 7x24 hours of continuous stable operation with 8 hours of charging and 16 hours of discharging. These orders have large volume and fast decision-making, but they are highly dependent on bilateral relations and geopolitical stability. Once oil prices remain low for a long time or political situation fluctuates, the sustainability of the projects will be questioned. Placing 93% of the orders overseas is equivalent to handing over the lifeline of the industry to other countries' policy cycles.
03
Cell exports are booming
The real threshold lies in "after-sales service" and "localization"
Cell signing is also very active. The disclosed cell orders in Q3 are about 246.6GWh, the 206GWh framework agreement between EVE and Fluence is the largest in volume, but the supply period covers 2027 to 2031, which is a long-term volume-locking agreement. In terms of product structure, 314Ah is still the main force, but 587Ah and 588Ah large-capacity cells have started to enter the order. The 5-year 10GWh sodium-ion battery agreement signed by Natron Energy (Zhongke Haina) and South Korea's VOLTA marks that sodium batteries have moved from demonstration projects to GWh-level delivery.
The speed of technological iteration is worthy of recognition, but a neglected problem is: the after-sales operation and maintenance and localization capability of overseas energy storage projects are becoming the "invisible ceiling" for Chinese enterprises.
Energy storage systems are not sold and forgotten. A GWh-level project requires an operation and maintenance cycle of 10 to 15 years, involving on-site commissioning, fault response, spare parts supply and software upgrade. What really determines whether Chinese enterprises can take root in Europe is often not the equipment, but local delivery, local operation and maintenance and local responsibility. Who can arrive at the site within two hours after the equipment alarm? Who can answer the phone in the local language? Who can make customers believe that the system will still be taken care of five or ten years later?
At present, the operation and maintenance system of most enterprises that have expanded overseas has not kept up with the growth rate of orders. Some enterprises adopt the "remote monitoring + local outsourcing" model, but the technical capabilities of local service providers are uneven, and the cooperating local service providers often face challenges of local regulatory recognition and qualification compliance. Some overseas customers tend to choose local integrators or Korean enterprises in the second-phase bidding after the delivery of the first-phase project. If Chinese enterprises' "first-mover advantage" is not supported by service capabilities, it is very likely to become a "one-off deal".
At the same time, building overseas factories is becoming a "required course" for leading enterprises. CATL's Hungarian plant has a total planned capacity of 100GWh, and the new cell plant started trial production in early 2026. EVE's Hungarian plant will also be put into operation in 2026. Chinese enterprises have a total of 787.5GWh of planned cell production capacity overseas, with about 50GWh of capacity already in operation. The period from 2026 to 2028 will witness the concentrated put-into-operation of overseas production capacity. But building overseas factories only solves the problem of production capacity localization, and cannot solve the problems of service localization and compliance localization. After the large-scale production capacity is put into operation, the real test has just begun.
In the final analysis, the 93% overseas proportion is not a number worthy of celebration, but a signal that requires vigilance. The gap between the planned production capacity of nearly 2000GWh and the actual global demand of 1026GWh, the cruel reality that 60% of the projects face losses, the continuously rising EU compliance threshold, and the serious lag of overseas after-sales operation and maintenance systems, these variables are superimposed to reshape the competition logic of the entire industry.
This article is from "Energy Foresight", published with authorization by 36Kr.