Recently, the Moss Landing energy storage station in Monterey County, California — once the world's largest lithium battery storage project — caught fire once again. This marks the fifth fire at the facility.
Regarding energy storage safety, Tian Qingjun, Senior Vice President of Envision, stated that recent overseas energy storage safety incidents carry important warnings and lessons for the domestic industry. Energy storage safety knows no borders, and under the industry's rapid expansion, the safety risks of large-scale lithium battery storage projects need to be reassessed. He noted that as the world's largest lithium battery producer and energy storage application market, China continues to see growing scale and number of GW-level storage projects, and is facing a critical test in moving from "scale leadership" to "safety leadership."
Tian Qingjun remarked that the biggest hidden danger in China's energy storage industry today is not a shortcoming in technological iteration, but rather the systemic safety risks planted by long-term extensive development. This has led the industry into a development trap of "emphasizing scale over safety, speed over quality, and delivery over verification," with safety redundancy continuously insufficient and long-term risks steadily accumulating.
He enumerated the core disorders currently plaguing China's domestic energy storage industry.
First, low-price involution. Homogeneous competition in the industry is fierce, with most companies grabbing orders through low prices, continuously compressing investment in R&D, testing, and quality control. This drags down the industry's safety and quality baseline, creating a vicious cycle where bad money drives out good.
Second, assembly-based OEM production. A large number of companies lack full-stack self-research capabilities and rely on simply assembling purchased components. Without system-level integrated design capabilities, their products suffer from inadequate adaptability and stability, planting hidden risks the moment they are delivered.
Third, blind cell enlargement. Cell enlargement has indeed contributed enormously to industry progress, but the "capacity arms race" must be guarded against. Currently, cell capacity doubles within 6 to 12 months, and new products enter the market at scale without sufficient condition adaptation and long-term reliability verification, causing quality risks to continuously accumulate.
Fourth, low-quality delivery. Energy storage delivery encompasses full-chain engineering capabilities including system integration, engineering construction, installation and commissioning, grid-connected operation, and acceptance quality control. Some companies lack whole-station delivery and standardized quality control systems, resulting in rough construction, lax commissioning, and perfunctory acceptance — leaving power stations "congenitally deficient" and planting major hidden dangers for long-term operations.
Fifth, disorderly capacity expansion. A large number of players are crowding into the sector, with capacity rapidly inflating but quality varying wildly, further intensifying homogeneous involution and safety risks.
"Overall, the above five types of disorders are interwoven and mutually amplifying," Tian Qingjun believes. Although China's energy storage industry holds over 80% of the global market share and overseas orders continue to grow explosively, the structural weakness of "iteration outpacing technological accumulation, delivery outpacing safety verification" is prominent. Energy storage is a heavy-asset, long-cycle infrastructure, and the development model of hasty iteration and hasty delivery seriously deviates from the industry's essential attributes, with long-term performance, asset safety, and overseas compliance risks continuously accumulating.
He stated that behind these disorders lies the industry's structural weakness of being "large but not strong, scattered but not refined." Among the hundreds of energy storage companies in China, most focus on low-end assembly and short-term delivery. Only about ten leading enterprises truly possess the triple core capabilities of a full-stack self-research foundation, full-lifecycle intelligent operations, and deep electricity market expertise — and whose products have passed complete hardcore safety verification and meet global high-standard overseas requirements. Currently, an industry-wide reshuffle is in full swing, with market resources accelerating their concentration toward technology-, quality-, and value-oriented leaders.
How can the safety dilemma be resolved? Tian Qingjun stated that energy storage safety is not a single-point technical issue but a systematic engineering challenge spanning the entire lifecycle — failure at any link can trigger cascading risks. The industry must abandon the old path of extensive expansion and low-price involution, adhere to value-first principles, R&D as the foundation, strict testing, and deep scenario cultivation, build six core capabilities, and establish a full-chain safety closed loop to fundamentally resolve industry safety risks.
He identified these six capabilities as: full-stack integrated system design capability, whole-station delivery and quality control capability, multi-scenario customized innovation capability, full-lifecycle intelligent operations capability, failed battery management and green recycling capability, and standardized evaluation and hardcore market access capability. These six capabilities are interlinked, forming a full-chain closed loop of "design — delivery — scenario — operations — recycling — standards." This is not only an inevitable choice for enterprises to build competitive barriers, but also the only path for China's energy storage to move from scale leadership to safety leadership, from product exports to standard exports, and from low-price competition to value co-creation.
Tian Qingjun revealed that Envision is working with industry associations to build a three-dimensional scientific evaluation system for energy storage centered on safety reliability, asset health, and operational efficiency. He also called for stricter safety regulations for energy storage stations, incorporating internationally recognized hardcore standards such as large-scale fire burn tests into domestic market access regulations, using rigid thresholds to eliminate low-end capacity and force the industry to return to safety-first, value-driven principles.