700Ah+ has secured another major order, and the large-format battery cell industry is shifting to delivery-oriented competition.

Envision 700Ah+ energy storage cells have gained recognition at home and abroad and have become a mainstream option in the industry.

On November 9, Envision Group signed the third cooperation project with German energy storage developer ju:niz Energy: the 442MWh Smareg13 (Vöhringen II) project in Bavaria. The project adopts the Gen 8 energy storage system equipped with 700Ah+ cells. After the project is put into operation, the total scale of cooperation between the two parties will be close to 600MWh.

The three projects of the two parties share the same platform and the same specification, and the scale of the third order exceeds the sum of the previous two. This fully demonstrates the recognition of Envision AESC's 700Ah+ cells in the overseas market.

Whether 700Ah+ can become the mainstream specification depends more on the speed at which production capacity is locked by contracts.

The Strongest Validation for 700Ah+

Smareg13 is adjacent to the already operational Smareg12. ju:niz is responsible for the development, financing and long-term operation after completion, while Envision provides the Gen 8 system platform and 700Ah+ cells.

The project is configured with a 4-hour duration, and the modular design reduces land occupation. Low noise is not a superficial modification of the equipment level — the station site is located in a sound environment sensitive area, and the noise limit constitutes a hard constraint for site selection. The so-called grid-forming capability refers to that energy storage can respond quickly and maintain voltage and frequency independently when the power grid is disturbed; the VDE series specifications constitute an important certification basis for grid connection and electrical safety in Germany.

The gap on the demand side is supported by data. The German Federal Solar Industry Association disclosed in October that 8.2GWh of new battery energy storage was added in the first three quarters, a year-on-year increase of 91%, of which large-scale energy storage reached 3.8GWh, an increase of about 350%, exceeding the 3.2GWh of residential energy storage for the first time, and the annual total is expected to exceed 10GWh.

Fraunhofer IEE estimates that if another 20GW of energy storage with 4-hour configuration is added, it can save consumers and the federal government about 3.9 billion euros per year. The driving force is not subsidies, but the gap between the expansion of photovoltaic output and grid constraints, which precipitates into a priced regulation demand at grid nodes.

The essence of 700Ah+ is a leap in the magnitude of the energy storage capacity of a single cell.

Take 790Ah as an example, the rated energy of a single cell announced by Envision exceeds 2.5kWh, and a 442MWh power station requires hundreds of thousands of cells. After the capacity of a single cell increases, the supporting Balance of Plant (BOP) works such as connection points, cables, supports and fire protection are reduced synchronously, and the land occupation and construction volume are also compressed accordingly.

The logic is not complicated, but the cost is quite specific: every reduced connection point corresponds to a verifiable cost reduction and reliability gain.

The purpose of an enterprise is to create customers. What facilitated the third order is not the parameter sheet, but the verifiable delivery track record.

As of the first half of this year, the projects equipped with cells delivered by Envision AESC have covered more than 20 countries and over 400 projects. Henry Peng, Senior Vice President of Envision Energy and President of Europe and Latin America Region, attributes this to "mutual trust". A more straightforward expression is — a stable delivery record constitutes the lowest-cost way to acquire customers.

Delivery Pressure in High-end Markets

On December 24, 2025, Germany revised the "Power Plant Grid Connection Ordinance" (KraftNAV) to remove large-scale energy storage from the "power plant queue"; from April 1, 2026, four transmission operators including 50Hertz, Amprion, TenneT and TransnetBW will allocate grid connection capacity according to project maturity: site guarantee and approval status, technical scheme, financing and implementation capacity of the applicant, power grid and system benefits each account for 25%, and the applicant also needs to pay 50,000 euros for the grid connection application fee.

Monitoring by the German Federal Network Agency shows that there is a backlog of 9,710 medium-voltage and above grid connection applications, corresponding to a planned capacity of about 400GW/661GWh, while the actual approved capacity is only 25GW/46GWh.

The ranking logic has changed from "first come first served" to "first to have landing conditions", speculative occupancy is squeezed out, and the verification of delivery capacity is moved forward to the equipment link: to prove that the project can be completed, the project party must lock in suppliers with delivery capabilities.

Low noise, grid-forming capability, local delivery and grid coordination are no longer publicity slogans in Germany, but verifiable capability items in maturity assessment. Envision places sales, engineering, delivery and grid connection coordination links locally, and this configuration exactly covers the capability list checked item by item under the new rules. Projects that enter the market only with low-price quotations lose competitiveness in the first round of maturity assessment.

In China, the calculation caliber has also been changed this year, but it falls on the revenue side.

Document No. 136 cancels the mandatory energy storage allocation, and energy storage is no longer a prerequisite for new energy grid connection; Document No. 114 establishes capacity tariff for grid-side independent energy storage for the first time, which is equivalent to a quasi-guaranteed income for on-call power stations. As of early September, 9 provinces and regions have issued relevant policies (including exposure drafts). Roland Berger predicts that it can increase the internal rate of return of projects to a healthy range of 8%-12%.

High returns are on the table, but the certainty of delivery is the key to pricing.

Sustained Orders, Sustained Delivery

This judgment has a verifiable correspondence on the production line side. Envision AESC's Yichang Super Factory was put into operation on July 15, mass-producing 790Ah prismatic wound cells. The parameters announced by Envision are a volumetric energy density of 440Wh/L, a cycle life of over 12,000 times, and a round-trip efficiency of 96%. The first batch was shipped directly to Germany, and more than half of the production capacity of the first phase has been locked by overseas customers.

During Intersolar Europe, Envision and ju:niz finalized a total of 140.6MWh projects, and signed the Stadorf 400MW/1600MWh project with Elements Green — the largest single-scale energy storage project in Germany so far. All these projects adopt this 790Ah cell. There was no press conference between the off-line and shipment.

In September, the bid winning result of equipment procurement for the 100MW/400MWh new technology route independent energy storage pilot project of Zhihong in Renqiu, Hebei was finalized. Envision won the bid for the lithium iron phosphate energy storage system section, and the large-capacity energy storage unit will be equipped with Envision AESC's 790Ah prismatic wound cells dedicated to energy storage.

The intensive signing of orders is actually testing the delivery capacity of Envision's 700Ah+ large cells. According to public information, Envision released the 700Ah+ large cell in 2025, and successfully achieved mass production in April 2026. This speed is quite remarkable.

At present, in addition to Envision AESC's Yichang Super Factory, the Cangzhou Super Factory is also operating at full capacity to produce 700Ah+ large cells. The second phase project, which was just put into operation in September 2026, has achieved full production of the 20GWh energy storage production line.

In the development of the energy storage industry, capacity has never been stipulated, but formed by industry practice. The continuous stream of orders at home and abroad shows that: large capacity has thus changed from a technical option to an economic option constrained by compliance, land occupation and construction volume.

According to public information, the current planned production capacity of the industry has exceeded the demand. However, the planned production capacity is only a figure on the books, and the part locked by orders constitutes the effective supply. Envision bases the production scheduling of new specifications on orders, not on industry plans.

This is where the significance of orders lies. More than half of the production capacity of the first phase in Yichang has been locked, which indicates that when the 790Ah production line was put into operation, a considerable part of the production scheduling has been matched to specific projects.

In the competition of the energy storage industry shifting from 300Ah+ cells to higher specifications, the one that can get more high-quality orders and better guarantee delivery is the key to determining the specification of the next generation of general-purpose cells.