The world’s first gigawatt-hour scale vanadium flow battery energy storage project has entered operation in China, with total installed capacity of 200 MW/ 1,000 MWh.
Located in the county of Jimusar, Xinjiang, the solar and storage project represents a total investment of CNY 3.8 billion ($520 million) and spans a 1,870 hectare site. It was developed by Huaneng Xinjiang Jimusar Power Co., with engineering and system integration handled by PowerChina Northwest Engineering Corp. Construction on the project was completed in mid-2025
Energy storage for the five-hour battery project was supplied by Rongke Power, a vanadium flow specialist headquartered in Dalian, China. The energy storage system is co-located with a 1 GW solar plant and been designed for intensive daily cycling, according to Rongke. The battery maker added that integrating the vanadium flow battery with the PV project should result in the utilization of 230 GWh more renewable energy each year.
Unlike the lithium-ion BESS assets that dominate grid-scale battery energy storage globally, vanadium flow batteries store energy in an electrolyte. They have lower energy density than their lithium counterparts but offer lower degradation and are non-flammable. The technology is being increasingly considered as a long-duration energy storage solution to support renewables deployment on grids.
China continues to dominate large-scale deployment, and the Jimusar project is the latest record breaking vanadium flow battery project delivered by Rongke. The Chinese manufacturer was also responsible for delivering storage to the 175 MW/700 MWh Xihnua Ushi Energy Storage project in Xinjiang in 2024, the largest of its kind at the time, as well as the 100 MW/400 MWh Dalian system which set the global record when commissioned in 2022.
