Saturday, 13 June 2026

At SNEC 2026 in Shanghai, Canadian Solar took the wraps off SolBank 4.0, an LFP utility-scale battery unit rated at 6.25 MWh and cooled by liquid.

The product packs that 6.25 MWh of DC capacity into a standardized 20-foot enclosure, runs on a 1,500 V DC architecture, and is configurable for 2-hour, 4-hour and 8-hour duty cycles. According to the manufacturer, cell energy density rises 25% versus the prior generation, and station-level density gains exceed 40%. Tighter integration, the company added, should trim balance-of-system costs by roughly 20%.

During the Shanghai show, TÜV Rheinland handed Canadian Solar a UL9540A thermal runaway safety assessment certificate for the new system.

First units are slated to roll off the line in Q4 2026, with North America and Europe identified as the early target markets.

Context

Canadian Solar's storage arm enters this launch from a sizeable base. As of March 2026, the company reported global deliveries of more than 20 GWh of energy storage systems and an order backlog near USD 3.5 billion. The SolBank 4.0 specs point to a clear vendor strategy: squeeze more megawatt-hours into the same container footprint, then pass the installation savings through to developers chasing tighter project economics in Western markets.

General Motors has struck a partnership with Peak Energy, a US battery storage manufacturer, to build and roll out grid-scale storage systems using sodium-ion cells.

GM will also begin manufacturing lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells within a month.

The automaker is already pushing EV-grade packs into stationary use through a separate arrangement with Redwood Materials. Roughly 10,000 GM batteries are being placed into energy infrastructure under that deal, including Crusoe's AI data center in Sparks, Nevada.

GM said a second-life deployment will begin next year at one of its Michigan plants, where about 100 packs are expected to deliver 7.2 MWh of dispatchable energy and trim more than USD 3 million from local electricity bills over the life of the installation.

Context

Ford and EDF announced a gigawatt-scale BESS agreement in May 2026, with deliveries set to start in 2028.

Sodium-ion chemistry, the basis of the Peak Energy tie-up, sidesteps lithium and cobalt and is pitched by manufacturers as a cheaper option for stationary projects where energy density matters less than in a vehicle. LFP, the chemistry GM is about to produce, now dominates both stationary storage installations and lower-cost EVs.

The Michigan project points to a second route into grid revenue: redeploying EV packs after their automotive duty cycle rather than sending them straight to recycling.

The US Department of Defense added CATL, Three Gorges, EVE Energy, Huawei, BYD, JA Solar and Trina Solar to its list of Chinese military companies in a June 9 update signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen A. Steinberg, pv magazine reported.

The same update also names Alibaba, China Electronics Corp. and China General Nuclear Power Corp, according to pv magazine.

The batch pulls in the heart of China's clean-energy supply chain. On the battery side, CATL and EVE Energy cover lithium-ion cells for grid storage and vehicles, and BYD spans both batteries and electric vehicles. JA Solar and Trina Solar sit among the largest photovoltaic module suppliers worldwide. Huawei brings grid inverters and power electronics into the same designation, and Three Gorges anchors the list on the generation side.

The non-energy additions widen the scope further. Alibaba is a retailer, China Electronics Corp. is a state-owned electronics group, and China General Nuclear Power Corp runs much of China's civil nuclear fleet, pv magazine reported.

The Pentagon list identifies companies the department associates with China's military. Designation does not by itself block commercial sales into the US market, but it carries federal contracting consequences and reputational weight for buyers.

Chinese suppliers dominate global production of lithium-ion cells and crystalline-silicon modules, and the named firms include several of the largest exporters into US energy storage and solar project pipelines.

Pylontech unveiled the PyOcean line of liquid-cooled battery energy storage systems at the SNEC 2026 trade show in Shanghai, with the company aiming the platform at grid-side deployments, large commercial and industrial sites, and AI data center loads.

The top model in the range, the PyOcean-M9-8000, carries 8.0 MWh of DC capacity and uses Pylontech's 601 Ah lithium iron phosphate cells. Per the company's product specifications, energy density reaches up to 426 Wh/L. The 601 Ah cell is rated for more than 12,000 cycles at a round-trip efficiency of 96.5%.

According to Pylontech, switching to larger cells inside a more integrated architecture cuts component count by 50%, land use by 38%, and installation workload by 10%. The company also estimates that on an 800 MWh storage project, the PyOcean-M9-8000 can lower direct investment by more than 10% relative to conventional designs.

First deliveries are scheduled for the third quarter of 2026.

Context

The PyOcean launch lands in a Chinese grid-scale storage segment now built around large-format LFP cells and liquid-cooled enclosures, where a 601 Ah cell and 8 MWh enclosure put Pylontech alongside the current high end of the field. The decision to name AI data centers as a target customer, beside grid-side and C&I projects, reflects a load category that needs firm, dispatchable power close to compute sites.