This week (March 27-April 2), the operating rate of SMM copper wire and cable enterprises was 69.95, down 0.81 percentage points MoM and down 11.11 percentage points YoY, with overall operations remaining stable. During the week, copper prices moved sideways, while end-users remained bearish. Downstream enterprises showed a strong wait-and-see sentiment in procurement, and new orders were weak. However, as existing orders from the previous period still supported normal production schedules, the operating rate declined only slightly. By segment, SMM learned that order placement in the power grid sector has been relatively weak recently, while orders in the NEV and optical fiber sectors performed well, and construction engineering-related orders remained far from optimistic. Inventory side, raw material inventory was still mainly consumed this week, so raw material inventory fell 2.84% MoM. As for finished product inventories, driven by the gradual pick-up of previous orders, inventory fell 3.31% MoM. Looking ahead to next week, continued fluctuations in copper prices are expected to keep suppressing end-user purchase willingness, and the operating rate is expected to continue to pull back, though downside room will be limited as orders on hand still support production schedules. SMM expects the operating rate of copper wire and cable next week (April 3-April 9) to fall 0.67 percentage points MoM to 69.29, down 15.58 percentage points YoY.

Markets frequently mistake an industry's sudden breakout for its origin. China's long-duration energy storage (LDES, ≥4 hours) sector did not abruptly emerge in 2026. Following policy incubation (2023-2024) and initial scaling (2025), 2026 marks a definitive inflection point, driven by a validated, closed-loop business model and exponential growth in grid-connected capacity.

On March 25, the Guoneng Yuci Energy Storage Primary Frequency Regulation Construction Project, undertaken by the Energy Construction Branch, successfully completed all procedures for grid connection and commissioning, was successfully connected to the power grid system, and was officially put into operation. This milestone event marked the company’s breakthrough from zero in the niche field of flywheel energy storage, a new-type energy storage segment. As Huadian Engineering’s first flywheel energy storage demonstration project, it carried the dual mission of technological exploration and market expansion. The core construction content of the project was an 8 MW/800 kWh magnetic levitation flywheel energy storage unit.

On March 27, the main transformer expansion project of the first UHV project in Henan's power grid during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the 1000 kV South Henan UHV substation expansion project (hereinafter referred to as the "South Henan expansion project"), was started. The commissioning of the project will increase the power supply capacity by 50%, further improve the safe operation and power supply guarantee level of the power grid, and promote the green and low-carbon transformation of energy.

Recently, Daqo Tailai Electric’s official account announced that the core No. 4 site of the 85 MW PV power station energy storage supporting project in Cuba, built by the company under Chinese government aid, was successfully connected to the grid and began power generation. The 85 MW PV+ESS project connected to the grid this time is planned as an overall layout of 15 distributed PV energy storage sites, covering multiple core power consumption areas in Cuba. It adopts a technical solution combining China’s currently mature and efficient PV modules with advanced ESS to achieve integrated operation of “PV power generation + energy storage peak shaving + off-grid backup.” Compared with traditional standalone PV power stations, the ESS supporting this project can effectively address the intermittency and fluctuations of PV power generation, improve the stability of power supply from the power grid, and ensure continuous regional power supply even under extreme weather or power grid failure conditions, thereby significantly improving energy utilization efficiency.

Recently, the 2025 Electrochemical Energy Storage Black Start and Frequency Regulation Key Technology Research and Application Project of Huadian Group Wuchang Branch was officially and successfully accepted for grid connection. The project was jointly advanced by Huadian Group, Shanghai Electric Power Transmission & Distribution Group, and REPT Battero. As a key pilot project under the national 14th Five-Year Plan, the project took the lead in achieving engineering application, marking that REPT Battero's 324Ah battery cell has 1P C-rate performance and has passed testing under relevant national standards, enabling it to participate in future grid-side frequency regulation projects. The project accepted for grid connection this time is located in Wuhan, Hubei, with a total capacity of 9MW/9.554MWh, consisting of two 4.5MW/4.5MWh energy storage units. It is intended to build electrochemical energy storage black start capability for two sets of 9E-class combined-cycle generating units and, when the ESS is idle, to participate in secondary frequency regulation ancillary services for the power grid through the combined thermal power and energy storage frequency regulation mode.