Farewell to Administrative Time-of-Use, Embrace Market Opportunities: JDEnergy Energy Builds New Competitive Advantages in Industrial and Commercial Energy Storage
In December 2025, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the Notice on Effectively Promoting the Signing and Performance of Medium- and Long-Term Power Contracts in 2026 (Fa Gai Yun Xing [2025] No. 1502, hereinafter referred to as Document 1502). This policy put “cancellation of time-of-use electricity pricing” on the hot search list, casting unprecedented doubts on industrial and commercial energy storage, which heavily relies on the peak-valley arbitrage model. As a leader in industrial and commercial energy storage, Singularity Energy believes that this policy is by no means a “terminator” for the industry, but a “catalyst” accelerating its transformation from policy-driven to market-driven. Only by deeply understanding the core of the policy and actively embracing market opportunities can we build new competitive advantages for the future.
01. Clarifying Concepts and Grasping the Core of the Policy
Recently, many industry insiders have simply interpreted Document 1502 as “canceling time-of-use electricity prices”, and some pessimists even claim that industrial and commercial energy storage is heading for a dead end. However, Singularity Energy holds the opposite view: this is far from the truth. We must see through the appearance to grasp the essence and accurately understand the core of this policy. First, we urgently need to clarify two key dimensions:
1. Cancellation of Administrative Time-of-Use Electricity Prices ≠ Cancellation of Time-of-Use Electricity Prices
Document 1502 clearly cancels the “administrative time-of-use electricity prices” formulated by local governments with mandatory and fixed implementation characteristics. Its core goal is to return the decision-making power of electricity pricing to the market.
Under the framework of full marketization of power reform, electricity, as a commodity, will inevitably be priced by supply and demand. Time-based price fluctuations will become more significant, frequent and complex. The time-of-use bidding mechanism in the electricity spot market and time-segmented contract prices in medium- and long-term transactions will become the main carriers reflecting the temporal and spatial value of electricity. This means that the time-of-use pricing mechanism will not only not disappear, but its importance will be unprecedentedly strengthened in a market-oriented environment — only the formation mechanism will shift from “administrative planning” to “market game”.
2. Composition of Market Users
Document 1502 clearly stipulates that, in principle, direct market participants will no longer be subject to government-mandated time-of-use electricity prices. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the composition of “market users”. According to their participation in market-based power purchase, industrial and commercial market users are mainly divided into three categories:
(1) Direct market participants (wholesale users): Their electricity prices are entirely determined by contract prices or real-time settlement prices formed through participation in the electricity market, directly exposed to market time-of-use price fluctuations.
(2) Grid-agent power purchase users (agency users): Their electricity prices follow administrative time periods and floating ratios. Notably, Document 1502 and relevant supporting rules require that agency power purchase prices shall timely and fully transmit market-based time-of-use price signals, usually presented to end users in the form of time-of-use pricing.
(3) Retail users served by electricity sales companies: Their time-of-use pricing is determined by retail packages signed with electricity sales companies.
In summary, regardless of the way of market participation, the electricity costs of all industrial and commercial users will be deeply embedded in the dynamic time-of-use pricing system shaped by both the electricity spot market and the medium- and long-term market. The market-oriented time-of-use pricing mechanism has become the underlying logic affecting users’ energy costs and the revenue models of energy storage projects.
02. Market Leadership and Restructuring of the Time-of-Use Pricing System
As industrial and commercial energy storage shifts from policy-driven to market-driven, the time-of-use pricing system will undergo restructuring, posing a fundamental challenge to the traditional peak-valley arbitrage model and spawning new trends.
1. Restructuring of the Time-of-Use Pricing System
- Price formation mechanism: shifting from fixed peak-valley periods to 24-hour segmented trading, with hourly prices determined by market bidding.
- Persistent deep price valleys at noon: with the continuous expansion of photovoltaic installed capacity, extremely low or even near-zero electricity prices will occur during the high PV generation period from 9:00 to 17:00, making the “duck curve” a norm.
- Reform of cost calculation: user electricity bills shift from “electricity consumption × average price” to “sum of (hourly electricity consumption × hourly market price)”, plus system operation fees and other charges.
2. Gradual Narrowing of Peak-Valley Price Differentials
Under administrative pricing, peak-valley differentials are set by the government based on historical data and regulatory intentions, often artificially widened to guide demand-side management. After full marketization, a large number of flexible resources participate in peak shaving and valley filling. During periods of high new energy generation, low-cost renewable electricity will be actively absorbed by flexible resources, pushing up electricity prices. Conversely, during periods of strong power demand, market prices rise, and flexible resources supply power to the market, increasing peak-period supply and suppressing peak prices. As a result, the overall average peak-valley price differential gradually narrows.
Meanwhile, factors such as the intermittency of renewable energy output, fuel price changes, unit failures and extreme weather will cause time-of-use electricity prices to fluctuate more sharply and rapidly than under administrative pricing. The traditional fixed “peak, flat, valley” period concept is broken, and high/low price windows become highly dynamic and unpredictable. This requires energy storage operations to have strong market insight, forecasting capabilities and rapid response capabilities.
3. “One Charge, One Discharge” Gradually Becoming the Mainstream
Under a highly dynamic, short and unstable market peak-valley cycle, the “two charges, two discharges” model becomes unsustainable and faces severe challenges: frequent charging and discharging not only increases equipment wear and tear, but also easily leads to losses when actual market price trends deviate from expectations.
The economical and efficient “one charge, one discharge” model has become a rational choice in a market-oriented environment. The core of this model is to accurately capture and efficiently utilize the single most valuable charging and discharging window.
Specifically, it means seizing the largest single intra-day peak-valley price differential, responding to extreme high prices in the spot market, or responding to high-compensation ancillary service calls. This requires energy storage systems to be capable of deep market participation, highly intelligent strategies and adaptive optimization.
03. Taking Multiple Measures to Build New Competitive Advantages
As policy dividends gradually fade, competition in the industrial and commercial energy storage market will intensify. Technology-driven innovation, diversified profitability and product innovation have become the keys to breaking through. With keen market insight and forward-looking layout, Singularity Energy has built multi-dimensional competitive barriers.
1. Building an Intelligent Energy Storage Hub
Facing the high uncertainty and complexity of market time-of-use electricity prices, Singularity Energy has fully upgraded its eMind Smart Energy Management Platform, with core breakthroughs as follows:
-
Multi-dimensional high-precision forecasting: the platform deeply integrates massive heterogeneous data including electricity market big data, meteorological information, historical loads and macro policies, and applies advanced learning algorithms to achieve high-precision forecasting of time-of-use electricity prices and user loads, laying a solid foundation for subsequent strategy formulation.
-
AI-driven real-time strategy optimization: based on real-time forecasting results and market trading rules, the platform uses AI technology to dynamically generate optimal charging and discharging strategies in real time. The strategy connects seamlessly with the electricity trading system to realize automatic execution of trading instructions, maximizing the economic value of a single charge-discharge cycle and helping users optimize revenue.
2. Building a Diversified Revenue Matrix
Against the backdrop of narrowing price differentials, relying solely on peak-valley arbitrage entails increasing risks, making “diversified profitability” an inevitable path. At present, Singularity Energy is accelerating the construction of a diversified revenue matrix:
(1) Virtual Power Plant + Spot Trading
Singularity Energy has built the e-VPP Virtual Power Plant Smart Management Platform, which can aggregate distributed resources to participate in power demand response and frequency regulation and other power ancillary service markets.
Meanwhile, relying on rich project implementation experience, strong data analysis capabilities and the independently developed eTrader Smart Electricity Spot Auxiliary Platform, Singularity Energy has launched an innovative AI “fully managed” trading service. It can accurately capture arbitrage opportunities in the electricity spot market, implement optimized strategies of discharging during high-price periods and charging during low-price periods, helping users gain arbitrage revenue in the electricity spot market. The platform has been successfully deployed in multiple generation-grid side projects, verifying its trading capabilities.
In the future, with the opening up of user-side energy storage participation in the electricity market, the platform’s mature trading capabilities can be smoothly extended to distributed energy resource (DER) aggregation scenarios, helping customers expand incremental revenue channels.
(2) Demand Management + Dynamic Capacity Expansion
As a regulating resource, energy storage can effectively reduce users’ contracted maximum demand or actual maximum demand by accurately cutting load peaks, thereby reducing basic electricity capacity fees — a stable revenue stream independent of electricity price fluctuations.
For users with growing electricity loads constrained by transformer capacity, energy storage provides a “dynamic capacity expansion” solution. Energy storage discharges to support loads during peak periods, significantly delaying or replacing expensive transformer capacity expansion investments to achieve low-cost capacity expansion.
(3) PV-Storage Integration to Break Bottlenecks in Consumption and Revenue
As of December 2025, many provinces across China have introduced “energy storage allocation approval” policies for PV-restricted (red-light) zones. The core is to set energy storage allocation ratios and durations by red/yellow zones, requiring energy storage to be planned, constructed and commissioned synchronously with PV. Some regions even allow meeting energy storage requirements through leasing (deemed as on-site allocation).
Under this model, energy storage absorbs surplus PV power during the noon high-generation period and discharges during evening peak and other high-price periods, significantly improving PV station consumption and overall revenue. For PV-storage integrated projects, energy storage has become a major driver of revenue optimization.
3. Innovative Product Iteration in Response to Market Trends
With market-based time-of-use pricing as the dominant model and the “duck curve” becoming the norm, the daily “one charge, one discharge” model with a single duration of ≥4 hours will become the mainstream trend in the future. In response, Singularity Energy has launched its new flagship industrial and commercial energy storage product eBlock-522, with the following advantages:
(1) Compatible with 2h and 4h scenarios: in 4h applications, the product is tailored to actual scenarios, significantly reducing AC-side investment costs and operational losses, and improving overall project revenue.
(2) Wide voltage access and multi-scenario adaptability: the product supports direct 380V access and medium-voltage access with transformers, adapting to various scenarios including general industrial and commercial users, large industrial parks and energy-intensive enterprises.
Document 1502 is not a “full stop” for industrial and commercial energy storage, but an “upgrade order” for the industry to shift from extensive to refined development and from a single to a diversified model. As the traditional peak-valley arbitrage model becomes history, comprehensive competitiveness based on market forecasting, trading capabilities, diversified revenue and product flexibility has become the key to enterprise survival and development.
With an accurate grasp of policy essence, profound insight into market trends, the dual-driven “forecasting + optimization” capability of the eMind smart platform, strategic layout of diversified profit models, and innovative breakthroughs of products such as eBlock-522, Singularity Energy has built new competitive advantages for the era of electricity marketization.
In a market environment full of variables and opportunities, Singularity Energy will continue to lead industrial and commercial energy storage through the fog of reform, seize certain opportunities amid uncertainty, and stride toward a new chapter of high-quality development.