Overview：

On June 21, 2022, the website of Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development released the Design Code for Electrochemical Energy Storage Station (Draft for Comments). This code was drafted by China Southern Power Grid Peak and Frequency Regulation Power Generation Co.,Ltd. as well as other companies, which are organized by Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. The standard is intended to apply to the design of new, expanded or modified stationary electrochemical energy storage station with a power of 500kW and a capacity of 500kW·h and above. It is a compulsory national standard. The deadline for comments is July 17, 2022.

Requirements of Lithium Batteries:

The standard recommends to use of lead-acid (lead-carbon) batteries, lithium-ion batteries and flow batteries. For lithium batteries, the requirements are as follows (in view restrictions of this version, only the main requirements are listed):

1. The technical requirements of lithium-ion batteries shall comply with the current national standard Lithium-ion Batteries Used in Power Storage GB/T 36276 and the current industrial standard Technical Specifications for Lithium-ion Batteries Used in Electrochemical Energy Storage Station NB/T 42091-2016.

2. The rated voltage of lithium-ion battery modules should be 38.4V, 48V, 51.2V, 64V, 128V, 153.6V, 166.4V, etc.

3. Technical requirements of lithium-ion battery management system should be in line with the current national standard Technical Specifications for Lithium-ion Batteries Used in Electrochemical Energy Storage Station GB / T 34131.

4. The grouping mode and connection topology of battery system should match the topology structure of the energy storage converter, and it is desirable to reduce the number of batteries connected in parallel.

5. The battery system should be equipped with DC circuit breakers, disconnect switches and other disconnecting and protection equipment.

6. DC side voltage should be determined according to the battery characteristics, voltage resistance level, insulation performance, and it should not be higher than 2kV.

Editor’s Statement:

This standard is still under consultation, corresponding documents can be found at the following website. As a national compulsory standard, the requirements will be mandatory, if you cannot meet the requirements of this standard, the later installation, acceptance will be affected. It is recommended that companies should be familiar with the requirements of the standard, so that the requirements of the standard can be considered at the product design stage to reduce the later product rectification.

This year, China has introduced and revised a number of regulations and standards for energy storage, such as the revision of GB/T 36276 standard, Twenty-five Key Requirements for Prevention of Power Production Accidents (2022) (draft for comment) (see below for detail), Implementation of New Energy Storage Development in the 14th Five-Year Plan, etc. These standards, policies, regulations foreshadow the important role of energy storage in the power system, while indicating that there are many imperfections in the energy storage system, such as electrochemical (especially lithium battery) energy storage, and China will also continue to focus on these imperfections.