China: draft accreditation guidance for safety inspection of large battery energy storage systems
On 23 September 2026 China’s accreditation body CNAS released for consultation a draft guide for accrediting inspection bodies that assess the safety of large battery energy storage systems. It concerns on-site inspection during installation, commissioning, operation and maintenance; comments are accepted until 11 October 2026.
- The guide covers systems with a rated power of at least 500 kW and a rated capacity of at least 500 kWh, or connected to the grid at 10 kV or higher, using lithium-ion or all-vanadium flow batteries.
- According to the explanatory note, existing standards mostly address laboratory type testing and work poorly for on-site inspection; detailed examples of requirements are given for flow batteries, while for lithium-ion batteries general principles are set out, including high-voltage electrical safety, system function verification and on-site emergency response.
- The inspection body must be a legal entity, and a type A body may have no links with the designer, manufacturer or user of the system; where safety functions depend on programmable logic or software, the body must be able to verify them.
- The document supplements guide CNAS-GI001 and refers to CNAS-CI01, equivalent to ISO/IEC 17020:2026; according to the explanatory note it is to be issued on 1 January 2027 and apply from that date.
Source: CNAS — 关于公开征求CNAS-GI0XX:202X《大功率储能电池系统安全评估领域检验机构认可指南》（征求意见稿）意见的通知