Cover News Reporter Xiong Yingying Yao Ruipeng (Photo provided by the interviewee)
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The 2024 government work report proposes to strengthen the construction of large-scale wind power and photovoltaic bases and transmission channels, promote the development and utilization of distributed energy, develop new energy storage, and ensure the energy demand of economic and social development. This is the first time that "the development of new energy storage" has been written into the government work report.
In April, the Pearl River Huifeng and Chang, the reporter walked into Zhiguang Electric, located in Huangpu District, Guangzhou, the huge "super charging treasure" in the laboratory is quietly accumulating, behind an energy storage cabinet is more than 500 families a day's electricity consumption, energy storage in the development of new quality productivity to show their own unique advantages.
In recent years, thanks to policy support, technological progress and the rapid increase in wind power and photovoltaic installed capacity, as a supporting industry for new energy, the mainland energy storage industry has developed rapidly, and has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest energy storage market and energy storage product provider country. While the installed capacity continues to reach new highs, the problem of "building but not using" new energy storage in some areas is also becoming increasingly prominent.
At present, what are the bottlenecks in the development of new energy storage? How to make the energy storage power station "live"? This is the answer that the reporter needs to find during his trip to Guangzhou.
Track "Hurricane"
The national new energy storage installed capacity reached the standard two years ahead of schedule
Located in Foshan, Guangdong, the Baotang Energy Storage Station, on a site about the size of five and a half football fields, rows of white container-type energy storage units are neatly arranged to form a "giant power bank", which can be "charged" by using clean energy such as wind and solar energy when electricity consumption is low, and then transmits the stored green electricity to thousands of households at peak electricity consumption. According to the calculation of "two charging and two discharging" per day, this largest energy storage power station in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area can meet the electricity demand of 200,000 residential users every year.
On the user side, such a "super charger" has also been put on the job. In Huizhou, on the east coast of the Greater Bay Area, a cascading high-voltage large-capacity energy storage system from Zhiguang Electric has been put into use. As the first user-side virtual power plant electrochemical energy storage project in Guangdong Province, it is expected to save more than 5 million yuan in electricity bills per year through peak-to-valley arbitrage.
From the power supply side to the user side, new energy storage has gradually landed across the country. By the end of 2023, the mainland has put into operation a total of 34.5GW of new energy storage, an increase of more than 260% over the previous year, and has completed the target two years ahead of schedule.
On the one hand, compared with pumped storage, the construction period of new energy storage is short, the site selection is simple and flexible, and the adjustment ability is strong, and the matching with new energy development and consumption is better. Therefore, accelerating the large-scale development of new energy storage has become an industry consensus.
Zhiguang Electric battery performance testing laboratory
On the other hand, Jiang Xinyu, executive vice president of Zhiguang Electric, mentioned that the new energy storage technology involves a variety of technical routes and is flexible in application, which is of great significance for promoting the improvement of new energy installation and terminal electrification rate, promoting energy conservation and green and low-carbon development, and achieving the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality.
"From this point of view, new energy storage plays a very important role in the construction of new power systems and energy revolution, which is also an important reason why it can be used as a representative industry of new quality productivity. Jiang Xinyu said.
Why is the "super charger" built but not used?
Three major issues need to be solved urgently
As early as 2022, energy storage was mentioned in the government work reports of Shandong, Sichuan, Hebei and other provinces, and local governments also further put forward requirements for the scale and duration of energy storage configuration.
With the support of policies, energy storage projects have blossomed everywhere, but the actual operation data of energy storage is not good. Previously, the "Investigation Report on the Operation of New Energy Distribution and Energy Storage" released by the China Electricity Council showed that the equivalent utilization coefficient of energy storage projects with new energy configuration was only 6.1%, and a large number of energy storage projects were reduced to decorations.
There are three main reasons for this: the market demand for energy storage is not urgent enough, the reliability of energy storage equipment needs to be strengthened, and there is no mature revenue model.
In Jiang Xinyu's view: at present, the proportion of new energy power generation in the total annual electricity consumption of the society is not high, and the assembly capacity of traditional thermal power and other units is still enough to support the stability of the power grid.
At present, the new energy storage in China is mainly electrochemical energy storage. Every energy storage power station is basically composed of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of battery cells, as long as one battery fails, a whole set of equipment may be shut down. This point has also been recognized by the relevant person in charge of energy storage of China Southern Power Grid. The person in charge said that from the perspective of the time period of electrochemical energy storage operation, the average conversion efficiency within 1 year of production is 80.53%, and the average conversion efficiency of more than 5 years is 60.86%, reflecting that the overall quality of battery products is not mature and stable enough.
Zhiguang Electric battery PACK production line
In the actual cases, more accidents are caused by "heavy construction and light maintenance management". In the face of relevant situations, Zhiguang has developed relevant DMS and other systems to monitor and warn the safety of energy storage batteries in real time, and reduce the possibility of hidden dangers caused by inadequate human management.
In addition, the above-mentioned person in charge also mentioned that there is no mature revenue model for new energy distribution and storage in many places, and independent energy storage on the grid side is subject to policy implementation and other problems, and the income of energy storage power stations cannot be effectively guaranteed. The main revenue methods of user-side energy storage include peak-to-valley arbitrage, demand electricity fee management, dynamic capacity increase, demand-side response, etc., but there are still many policy obstacles that need to be broken.
How to make the energy storage power station "live"?
"Virtual" power plants help balance energy supply and demand
In the face of the utilization rate of 6.1%, how to better "live" has become a realistic demand for new energy storage.
Jiang Xinyu suggested that the first step should be to appropriately adjust the current distribution and storage policy, new energy distribution and storage can not be one-size-fits-all, and the actual role and value of energy storage should be rationally evaluated in combination with the supply and demand characteristics and application scenarios of specific regions. Combined with the characteristics of easy site selection and short construction period of energy storage power stations, storage is allocated when needed, and the amount is increased and reduced if the amount is large.
"Accelerate the promotion of energy storage to participate in the electricity spot market, establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism for terminal peak and valley electricity prices, appropriately increase the spot market price difference, and expand the profitability of energy storage. Liu Yong, secretary-general of the China Energy Storage Association, said that it is necessary to study the cost sharing method between multiple beneficiaries such as power generation, power grid, and users. Who benefits, who pays, new energy storage will eventually benefit through the market.
The low utilization rate means that there is still a broader space for the development of energy storage. How can companies seize the opportunity to grow further?
"Residential energy storage has become a major growth point in overseas markets in the past few years. Jiang Xinyu said that some underdeveloped countries have imperfect power grid construction, and the demand for microgrid energy storage is large, while developed countries have a mature power market mechanism, the terminal consumption price is high, and overseas buildings are mainly low-rise independent buildings, combined with distributed photovoltaic supporting the construction of energy storage is difficult, and the market demand for "household storage" is large.
Baotang Energy Storage Station of China Southern Power Grid Energy Storage Company
For the domestic market, the "virtual" power plant accepts grid dispatch as a whole by aggregating adjustable power load resources, so as to realize the mutual assistance of resources on the user side. Through the integrated energy service model based on distributed energy + energy storage, Zhiguang continuously strengthens the construction of user-side regulation capabilities, and is committed to promoting the commercialization process of "virtual" power plant business. A few days ago, China Southern Power Grid Energy Storage Technology also signed an agreement with NIO to carry out comprehensive cooperation in the fields of virtual power plants and battery swap stations to promote the commercial application of battery swap stations as distributed energy storage.
As a new technology and new business format in the process of national energy transformation, new energy storage is still facing many problems while singing all the way. In the face of the expanding installed scale of energy storage in the future, it is necessary to solve the practical problem of "building but not using", so as to give full play to the important role of new energy storage in the process of developing new quality productivity.
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