CHINA is expected to raise its power storage capacity by 10-fold to 14.5 gigawatts by 2020, as the world’s second-biggest economy tries to cut massive waste from renewable energy projects, an industry association said.

    China is the world’s largest wind and solar power producer, but some regions are estimated to be losing more than 40 percent of their power because of technical restraints and bottlenecks in the grid, alongside weak power demand growth.

    Storage technologies, such as pumped storage hydropower or lithium ion batteries, are expected to play a critical role in improving China’s capacity to make better use of renewables.

    China currently has 105 megawatts of storage capacity after a 110 percent increase over the previous five years, but that represented just 1.7 percent of total generation capacity by 2015, according to a report released last week by the China Energy Storage Alliance, an industry body.

    “We didn’t count pumped hydropower, and we project growth to rise to 14.5 GW by 2020 based on manufacturers’ orders,” said Tina Zhang, managing director of the alliance.(SD-Agencies)