An efficient method for gravity field determination from CHAMP orbits and accelerometer data is referred to as the energy balance approach. A new CHAMP gravity field recovery strategy based on the im-proved energy balance approach is developed in this paper. The method simultaneously solves the spherical harmonic coefficients, daily integration constant, scale and bias parameters. Two 60 degree and order gravitational potential models, XISM-CHAMP01S from the classical energy balance approach, and XISM-CHAMP02S from the improved energy balance, are determined using about one year’s worth of CHAMP kinematic orbits from TUM and accelerometer data from GFZ. Comparisons among XISM-CHAMP01S, XISM-CHAMP02S, EIGEN-CG03C, EIGEN-CHAMP03S, EIGEN2, ENIGN1S and EGM96 are made. The results show that the XISM-CHAMP02S model is more accurate than EGM96, EIGEN1S, EIGEN2 and XISM-CHAMP01S at the same degree and order, and has almost the same accuracy as EIGEN-CHAMP03S.