In two investor relations records published last month, BYD told analysts that BYD energy storage is now the group’s strategic centre of gravity rather than a side business hanging off the car division. The claim rests on a genuine statistic: in InfoLink‘s ranking of global energy storage systems for the first half of 2026, BYD came first. In SNE Research’s ranking of storage cells and batteries over the same six months, it came fourth, at 35.7 GWh against CATL’s 125 GWh. Both numbers are correct. They are not the same measurement, and the distance between them is where the story sits.
What BYD Energy Storage Actually Means Inside the Group
The disclosure is not a press release and it is not in the accounts. It is an answer to an analyst question, recorded twice. In the investor relations record from 11 September 2026, and again in the record for 15 September (filing 2026-25, a call with Daiwa Securities and 30 other participants), BYD states that energy storage is the group’s strategic centre of gravity business — “储能是集团战略重心业务” in the original.
Attached to it are the specifics the company wants on the record: first-half storage system shipments ranked first worldwide, products sold into more than 110 countries, and five deployment categories — generation-side, grid-side, commercial and industrial, residential, and storage attached to AI data centres. BYD also names the reason its own products win: blade cell architecture, with its safety, cycle life and cost position.
It also names the risk, and this is worth preserving. Storage, BYD told analysts, faces “阶段性价格波动、项目分化的现象” — periodic price swings and project divergence. Then it sets out the strategy in two halves: keep hunting large overseas storage projects, and take the domestic new power system window, with the stated aim of balancing volume against “合理盈利” — reasonable profit — rather than chasing volume alone.
That word choice matters. A company that has spent three years competing on scale in electric cars is telling investors that in storage it will not.
The Two Rankings That Are Both Correct
The “world number one” headline comes from one research house measuring one thing. The second research house measures something else and produces a different answer.
| Research house | What it measures | H1 2026 global total | BYD’s position |
|---|---|---|---|
| InfoLink | Storage systems — integrated, AC-side delivery | 303.40 GWh, +83.45% | 1st |
| SNE Research | Storage cells and batteries | 461.3 GWh, +71% | 4th, 35.7 GWh, +73%, 7.7% share |
Two things fall out of that table. The first is that the two “global markets” differ by a factor of 1.52 — 461.3 GWh of cells against 303.40 GWh of systems, for the same six months — because a cell counted once is counted once, while a system counted once already contains cells. The second is that BYD’s own half-year is reported as 35.7 GWh by SNE, roughly 63 GWh by Benchmark, and 72.6 GWh by ICC Xintuo, depending on whether the metric is cell output, battery installation or system integration. That is a spread of just over 2x on the same six months of the same company.
In the cell ranking the field looks different. CATL led at 125 GWh and a 27.1% share, up 81%. EVE Energy was second at 48 GWh, Hithium third at 46.2 GWh, BYD fourth at 35.7 GWh — which puts BYD at 28.6% of CATL’s volume, a little over a quarter, not a hair’s breadth. All ten of the largest storage cell suppliers in the world were Chinese firms. LG Energy Solution grew fastest in percentage terms at 357%, but ranked eleventh on 12 GWh.
InfoLink’s breakdown is also worth keeping, because it shows where the growth is. Large-scale storage systems came to 260.33 GWh, up 79.60%. Residential systems came to 39.07 GWh, up 137.67%. And InfoLink flags AIDC-attached storage as the second-half focus, noting that some suppliers already hold order books above 10 GWh that are moving into delivery.
Why Systems and Cells Are Different Businesses
The gap is not a discrepancy to be resolved. It is two different industries sharing a word.
Cell shipments measure component output. System shipments measure projects delivered — the container, the PCS, the controls, the site work, the commissioning, and often the service contract that follows. The competitive set is different in each. Sungrow and Huawei Digital Power sit near the top of the systems table without being large cell suppliers; CATL leads the cell table outright and does not lead systems. A company that makes its own cells and integrates and delivers projects shows up in both, and its rank moves depending on which supplier group it is being measured against.
That is what BYD is doing, and it is a rational position for a company with its own cell plant and its own vehicle fleet. BYD’s GC Block containerised storage product sits at the system end, and Chinese trade coverage puts the company’s 2026 guidance at 350–380 GWh of total battery installation with storage above 80 GWh, up about 60%. The company has not confirmed that split itself.
Seen properly, “first in systems, fourth in cells” is not a contradiction or a marketing trick. It is the accurate description of a vertically integrated company that sells projects rather than parts.
The system layer is also where the industry’s least solved problem sits. Storage cells are designed around a twenty-year life while the power electronics that convert their output typically last ten to fifteen, which means the equipment around the battery has to be replaced mid-project — a mismatch CATL has begun describing publicly as the reliability question that matters more than cell chemistry. Selling systems rather than cells puts a supplier on the hook for that difference, which is a reason the systems table and the cell table are not comparable scorecards.
The Second Product Line: AI Data Centres
The part of BYD’s September disclosure that has attracted the least attention is also the most forward-looking. AIDC storage is listed as one of the five deployment categories, and in the wider set of September investor records BYD goes further: in AI data centre expansion, it said, power demand is not only a question of quantity but of quality — and AI energy solutions will be one of the group’s key directions in the next phase.
Then there is the line that connects storage back to BYD’s own charging network. Relying on the flash-charging ecosystem, BYD told investors, tens of thousands of flash-charging stations will each be equipped with storage — “未来数万座闪充站每一座配备储能” — opening peak shaving, frequency regulation and power operation revenue on top of charging. The 10,000th station was completed on 28 August and the company has said it wants 20,000 in China by the end of 2026.
The arithmetic on that target is tighter than the ranking story. Ten thousand stations were open on 28 August, covering 332 cities — about 30 per city. Another 10,000 are needed by 31 December, which is 125 days, or 80 new stations a day. BYD has not disclosed the storage capacity it intends to install at each one, so the fleet’s eventual size cannot be calculated from published material. At a modest 200 kWh per station, 20,000 stations would be 4 GWh; at 1 MWh each, 20 GWh. Either figure is small next to BYD’s own annual storage shipments — the point is not the volume, it is that a charging network becomes a distributed storage asset, which is a different business from selling containers to a utility.
What BYD Has Not Disclosed
None of this can currently be checked against BYD’s accounts, because storage does not have a line in them. The business sits inside the reporting segment labelled “automobiles and automobile-related products and other products”, and BYD does not break out storage revenue, storage margin, storage capital spending or the storage order book. The “strategic centre of gravity” statement is therefore a direction of travel, not a number anyone outside the company can test.
Two context points belong next to that. First, BYD’s disclosure repeats the industry’s own admission of price volatility and project divergence, which is exactly what a business reclassified as a strategic priority has to survive. Second, Chinese trade coverage notes that among the seven largest listed storage cell suppliers, BYD was the only one to report a year-on-year decline in first-half group revenue — the car business, not the storage business, but the reason a storage line item would matter.
The Bottom Line: BYD told investors in September that BYD energy storage is now the group’s strategic centre of gravity, on the strength of first place in InfoLink’s first-half storage systems table — 303.40 GWh globally, up 83.45%. The same six months put it fourth in SNE Research’s storage cell table at 35.7 GWh, 28.6% of CATL’s 125 GWh, a spread explained by what the two houses measure rather than by any error. The AIDC category and the plan to put storage at every one of tens of thousands of flash-charging stations are the genuinely new commitments. Whether storage is a strategic centre or a strategic talking point will be settled by the accounts, and BYD does not yet publish one.
Notes: BYD’s statements that storage is the group’s strategic centre of gravity, the first-half global number one position in systems, the 110-country coverage and the five deployment categories come from the company’s own investor relations records of 11 and 15 September 2026 and in the second case from its filed record on CNINFO; they are company statements and have not been independently verified by EVsays. InfoLink and SNE Research figures are third-party research estimates with different methodologies and are not comparable with each other or with the ICC Xintuo and Benchmark figures cited. The 28.6% ratio, the 1.52x gap between the two global totals, the 2x spread across research houses, the 30-per-city figure, the 80-stations-a-day rate and the 4 GWh to 20 GWh range for charging-network storage are our calculations from published figures, and the storage-per-station range rests on an assumption BYD has not disclosed. Financial-context points drawn from Chinese trade coverage are attributed as such. EVsays did not attend any BYD event, has not tested any product and has no relationship with BYD. See our editorial policy and correction policy.
Sources & Further Reading
- BYD Company Limited — Investor Relations Activity Record, filing 2026-25 (15 September 2026, CNINFO) — the primary source: the group’s 15 September call with Daiwa Securities and other participants, including the statement that storage is the group’s strategic centre of gravity business, the first-half number one system shipment claim, the 110-country coverage, the five deployment categories, and the smart-driving, embodied-intelligence and flash-charging disclosures.
- Xinhua Finance (新华财经) — “BYD: Investor Relations Activity Record, 11 September 2026” — the earlier record, confirming the same storage framing and the flash-charging network build-out: 10,000 stations completed, 20,000 targeted domestically by the end of 2026.
- Securities Daily (证券日报), via China Economic Net — “Storage and computing-power-adjacent storage emerge as new increments as listed companies move” (8 October 2026) — the article that surfaced BYD’s classification; the Wind data showing 37 lithium-chain listed companies published investor relations records from September; and the neighbouring disclosures from Funeng Technology and Wanrun New Energy.
- Sina Finance — “First-half global storage system shipment ranking: BYD, Sungrow, Huawei, Tesla, HyperStrong lead” (18 August 2026) — the InfoLink ranking placing BYD first among storage system suppliers, with the 303.40 GWh global total, the split between large-scale and residential, and the AIDC focus for the second half.
- SNE Research — first-half 2026 global energy storage system shipment data, as reported by Chinese trade coverage — global total 461.3 GWh, up 71%; CATL 125 GWh and 27.1%; EVE Energy 48 GWh; Hithium 46.2 GWh; BYD 35.7 GWh and 7.7%. (The reporting outlet, chinaevhome.com, returned an access error for EVsays at the time of publication, so no link is given; the figures are listed here for readers to verify against SNE’s own reporting.)
- Chinese trade and financial media aggregation of September investor relations records (Tonghuashun, 4 October 2026) — BYD’s statements that storage demand will keep growing at a high rate, that AI data centre power demand is a question of quality as well as quantity, that AI energy solutions will be one of its next-phase directions, and the plan for storage at every flash-charging station; along with Pylontech’s 3,431 MWh of first-half sales and Capchem’s expectation that storage battery demand will outgrow power battery demand over the next two to three years.
- EVsays — Energy Storage Reliability: CATL Says the Cells Will Outlast the Electronics — on the reliability and lifetime mismatch that sits behind the storage build-out BYD is describing.
- EVsays — Saudi Arabia’s First Grid Batteries Broke Ground — the Middle East tender where Chinese storage suppliers, including BYD’s domestic peers, are competing for volume.
