Battery giant’s spin-off bets on boom in home energy systems
Ampace looks to solidify its dominant position in markets away from electric vehicles and phones
Ampace, a spin-off of the world’s largest battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL), is betting on a boom in home energy storage systems and the “batterification” of tools and electronic devices as it aims to solidify an already dominant position in a part of the market away from electric cars and smartphones.
“There is huge demand and there are diverse application scenarios for small- and mediumscale energy storage and mediumsized lithium-ion batteries, and we want to carve out a space in this part of the battery market,” said Yuan Qingfeng, research and development director at Ampace.
The Xiamen-headquartered company was founded in 2021 as a joint venture between CATL and CATL’s former parent company, Amperex Technology Limited (ATL).
Unlike CATL, which focuses on large-scale industrial energy storage and car batteries, and ATL, which specialises in battery technologies for smartphones, laptops and digital cameras, Ampace targets the use of lithium-ion batteries in residential and commercial energy storage systems, electric two-wheelers, and medium-sized electronic devices such as drones, robots, vacuum cleaners and power tools.
Within three years of its inception, the little-known firm has managed to quietly move into a leading position in the global home energy storage market, where batteries allow households to store surplus electricity for later consumption.
According to data from Shenzhen Gaogong Industry Research, China shipped 20 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of the global total of 24GWh of residential energy storage systems last year.
Ampace was ranked the biggest manufacturer, accounting for more than 30 per cent of China’s contribution. By the end of last year, it said it had shipped home energy storage systems to more than 41 million households in 29 countries.
“We see huge opportunities in residential and commercial uses of energy storage systems in the transition to renewable energy in China and the rest of the world,” Yuan said.
The firm launched Ampace C5, its latest energy storage facility for both commercial and industrial use, in Beijing last week. The system could reduce the cost of operations by 46 per cent over 10 years of use, it said, and was expected to be massproduced from July this year.
“There are a wide range of application scenarios for energy storage installation in different industries and businesses. It’s not only industries and enterprises with high energy consumption. Schools, parks and ports also have potential demand for energy storage systems,” Yuan said.
Demand for energy storage systems at home could be slower than in overseas markets, but was also likely to improve given China’s push for renewable energy, he added.
China’s energy storage sector nearly quadrupled its capacity from new technologies such as lithium-ion batteries in 2023, reaching 31.4GW by the end of the year, according to the National Energy Administration.
Total investment in energy storage projects had exceeded 100 billion yuan (HK$109 billion) since 2021, making the sector a “new driving force” for economic development, an official with the energy agency said in January.
China is rapidly expanding its energy storage facilities to absorb record-breaking levels of renewable energy generated from intermittent wind and solar sources to ensure a stable power supply, as the country works towards having 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2060. That is the same year it wants to achieve net-zero emissions.
Lithium-ion battery energy storage accounted for 97 per cent of operational energy storage capacity by the end of last year, according to the energy agency.
“For vehicles and consumer electronics, we see two trends that will benefit the battery market. One is the transition from petroleum to electricity, and the other is the transition from cord to cordless,” Yuan said.
In six years’ time, 30 per cent of two-wheel vehicles worldwide, including mopeds, scooters and motorcycles, will be electric, compared with only a small percentage today, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Co.