How to Check Energy Storage System Commissioning and Acceptance Tests: The Test Gates in China's Rules, the Standards That Name Them, and the Baseline Performance Tests to Ask For

Short answer. Commissioning is the process of verifying and documenting that a storage system meets its defined safety and performance specifications; it runs from design review through factory witness tests to start-up testing. For China, this guide assembles the national texts into a sequence of gates (CNWattHub editorial method): qualified-laboratory testing of equipment and arrival sampling; completion acceptance, quality-supervision procedures and fire acceptance; type tests, whole-station commissioning tests and grid-connection tests before grid acceptance; grid-related tests after connection; and safety inspection and post-evaluation. National standards for start-up acceptance and grid-connection testing were issued in 2024. A buyer should also ask for a baseline capacity and efficiency test, because the PNNL/Sandia protocol uses it as the baseline for assessing later changes in performance and runs a round-trip efficiency test alongside it.

1. What commissioning is

A Sandia commissioning overview defines it as a process to verify and document that a device, system or facility meets defined safety and performance specifications, incorporating design review and verification, system specifications, safety, construction inspection, factory witness tests and start-up and testing procedures; it starts in design and runs through the project. That framing matters because Chinese texts split the same work between the owner, testing institutions, the grid company and the dispatch centre.

2. The test gates in China's national texts

Equipment and arrival. The NEA's 2022 safety notice for electrochemical storage stations requires equipment and systems to pass inspection by institutions qualified for storage testing, and arrival sampling of batteries and battery management systems to be entrusted to such institutions, with samples drawn to batch and product-consistency requirements and results meeting national or industry safety requirements. The 2021 interim management norms already required main equipment to pass testing and certification by qualified institutions.

Completion acceptance, quality supervision and fire acceptance. Before a station goes into production the owner must organise completion acceptance, complete quality-supervision procedures and pass fire acceptance. The 2021 norms require the quality, environmental and fire procedures to be completed before grid commissioning.

Whole-station commissioning and grid-connection tests. Grid-connection testing must be done by a qualified storage testing institution, and before grid-connection acceptance the owner must complete type tests of main equipment and systems, whole-station commissioning tests and grid-connection tests; grid companies must not connect stations that fail grid technical standards, and the dispatch agreement sets a safe dispatch range. Grid companies must set out the grid commissioning and acceptance process and cooperate in it.

Grid acceptance and post-connection tests. The NEA's 2024 notice on storage grid integration and dispatch requires grid companies and dispatch centres to publish connection rules with the process, standards and grid-related test requirements; the dispatch centre organises grid-connection acceptance and signs the dispatch agreement; storage must complete all grid-related tests within a specified time after connection and complete the relevant performance tests; all new-type storage within a dispatch centre's remit must be able to adjust active and reactive power automatically on dispatch command through AGC and AVC. CNWattHub editorial method: "connected" is therefore not the same as "fully tested" — ask for the list and dates of post-connection grid tests.

Safety inspection and post-evaluation. The NEA-led 2025 multi-department notice (国能综通安全〔2025〕65号) requires the owner to analyse safety conditions and facilities at feasibility stage, inspect safety facilities after completion or trial operation and fix problems, and carry out a safety post-evaluation after a period of operation; it also calls for faster revision of standards for design, construction, acceptance, grid connection and operation.

3. The standards that name the tests

GB/T 43868 and GB/T 36548 are current recommended national standards administered by the China Electricity Council. This guide cites their information pages only; it does not describe their test items or pass criteria, which a buyer should read in the standard itself. IEC 62933-2-1 defines unit parameters and testing methods for system performance and excludes the storage devices themselves.

4. The baseline performance test

The Chinese texts above focus on safety and grid compliance. For performance, the PNNL/Sandia protocol (PNNL-22010 Rev 2, 2016) defines a reference performance test as tests at the beginning of a system's life to establish baseline performance, repeated periodically to measure degradation; it is run on the entire system, for every system regardless of application, before duty-cycle testing; the stored-energy test discharges at the manufacturer's rated power to the lower state-of-charge limit and assumes the system powers its own auxiliary loads. The protocol repeats the stored-energy steps at 75%, 50% and 25% of rated power and runs a round-trip efficiency test alongside, with AC charging energy measured including all parasitic losses.

National statistics show why both power and energy need checking: the NEA reports China's operating new-type storage at end-2025 as 136 GW / 351 GWh, an average of 2.58 hours, with lithium-ion at 96.1% of capacity and, by preliminary statistics, average equivalent utilisation of 1,195 hours in 2025. A handover that tests only power (MW) leaves the energy (MWh) and efficiency baseline undocumented.

Test-gate map

Documents to request at handover

CNWattHub editorial method, not a sourced rule:

1. Qualified-laboratory test and certification reports for main equipment, and arrival-sampling reports for batteries and BMS.
2. Completion acceptance, quality-supervision and fire acceptance records.
3. Type-test, whole-station commissioning and grid-connection test reports, with the testing institution named.
4. The grid acceptance record, the dispatch agreement (including the safe dispatch range) and the schedule of post-connection grid tests.
5. A baseline stored-energy and round-trip-efficiency test at rated power, with auxiliary loads stated, to anchor warranty and degradation tracking.
6. The safety-facility inspection record and the plan for post-evaluation.

Scope limits

The full texts of GB/T 43868, GB/T 36548 and GB/T 36547 were not read; their test items and criteria are not described. PNNL-22010 Rev 3 and other DOE/Sandia commissioning guides on osti.gov could not be retrieved; Rev 2 is cited. Provincial grid-connection rules, NFPA 855 and UL 9540A are not covered. Not engineering, legal or procurement advice.