Chengdu’s First 10MW/h User-Side Energy Storage Project Goes Live in Xinjin
In June last year, a row of silver-grey storage cabinets in the Chengdu Xinjin Economic Development Zone quietly began doing something new for the local grid: buying and selling power on the client’s behalf, hour by hour. The system — rated 5.175MW/10.03MWh and connected at 10kV — is Chengdu’s first user-side energy storage project built at the 10MW/h scale, and it’s now fully grid-connected and in commercial operation at a manufacturing facility known locally as the Fangxin project.
System Configuration and Core Equipment
Zhongxin General served as core equipment supplier and general contractor for the project, delivering the 10kV EMS scheduling and grid-connection cabinets together with the step-up transformer cabin system that ties the storage array into the client’s internal network.
The battery side is built from 24 containerized units arranged in two parallel rows, giving the site a compact, factory-assembled footprint that shortened on-site installation time considerably.
A “Two-Charge, Two-Discharge” Schedule Built Around Price Arbitrage
Rather than simply storing and releasing power on a fixed timer, the system runs on an algorithm-driven “two-charge, two-discharge” cycle: it charges during the overnight low-price window and again through the midday flat-price period, then discharges roughly 20,000 kWh of stored power during the morning and evening peak-price windows. The result is a schedule tuned to capture the spread between Sichuan’s peak and off-peak electricity tariffs on a daily basis — easing pressure on the local grid at the moments it’s most stressed, and cutting the client’s annual electricity bill by close to RMB 1 million.
Behind the schedule is Zhongxin General’s self-developed smart-grid cloud platform, which reads the site’s load curve and real-time electricity pricing and adjusts the charge/discharge plan accordingly — the same virtual power plant (VPP) capability the company demonstrated at the 2026 China Smart Energy Conference and applied on its earlier 5.175MW/10.03MWh user-side storage project in Weiyuan, Neijiang.
Built and Operated Under an EMC Model
The project was designed and constructed by Sichuan Zhongxin General Electric Energy Co., Ltd. together with its holding subsidiary, Sichuan Shuzhi Ruian Energy Development Co., Ltd. — a joint venture that pools core technology from Anzhifu, CATL, and Zhongxin General around a “source–grid–load–storage” deployment model, covering everything from substation equipment to production-line power quality to carbon-footprint reporting.
As with Zhongxin General’s other user-side storage deployments, the equipment, installation, and ongoing operation and maintenance are covered under a Contract Energy Management (EMC) arrangement, meaning the client made no upfront capital investment and instead shares in the savings the system generates.
Industry Recognition: Two Association Visits in Two Days
The project’s profile in Chengdu’s power sector was underlined by back-to-back site visits from two industry bodies. On June 19th last year, more than 60 member companies of the Chengdu Electric Power Industry Association toured the site and gathered in front of the grid-connection cabinets for an open discussion of the technology.
Association Secretary-General Zhu Kui described user-side storage as one of the newer tools Sichuan’s power users have turned to for managing summer peak demand over the past two years, and called the Fangxin project a reference case worth studying by leading firms across the industry.
The following day, a delegation from the Chengdu Electric Power Industry Chamber of Commerce made the same trip. Chamber President Chen Suqing, touring the site’s control center, noted that interest from both an industry association and a chamber of commerce in the same week is itself a signal of how urgent the demand for user-side storage has become — and placed Zhongxin General at the front of that shift.
Part of a Broader Push Into User-Side Storage
The Xinjin project follows the same playbook Zhongxin General has used on other storage deployments across Sichuan, including its HV/MV/LV switchgear and energy storage substation product lines featured across the company’s case studies. Rooted in Xinjin since 2017 and built on eight years of transformer manufacturing for clients including State Grid and China Railway, Zhongxin General has been expanding from equipment supplier toward what it calls a “power partner” model — pairing hardware with its own VPP software and long-term service contracts.
With Chengdu’s first 10MW/h user-side project now online, and two of the city’s power-industry bodies publicly pointing to it as a template, the Fangxin site looks likely to be one of several reference points for how Sichuan’s industrial parks approach storage over the next few years.
For more on Zhongxin General’s storage capabilities, see the Energy Storage Substation product page, browse the full Products range, or get in touch to discuss a project.
