China’s Crowded Battery Market Weighs on Energy Storage Profits

Intensifying competition in China’s battery and energy storage sector is beginning to weigh on earnings, as a flood of new entrants squeezes margins and raises fears of bruising price wars seen in other clean energy industries.

Sungrow Power Supply Co., one of the country’s leading makers of renewable energy equipment, reported a sharp decline in first-quarter profit, underscoring the pressure facing manufacturers as capacity expands faster than demand. Net income fell 40% from a year earlier to 2.29 billion yuan ($335 million) in the January-to-March period, the Hefei-based company said in a filing on Monday.