Image source: Live shooting
In a recent public speech, Huang made it clear that "the end of AI is photovoltaics and energy storage!" We can't just think about computing power, and if we only think about computers, we need to burn 14 Earths of energy. ”
As soon as the words fell, Huang's views were strongly supported by Altman and Musk, who believed that the future of AI technology depends on energy supply and requires more photovoltaic and energy storage, and Musk also believes that the development of AI will suffer from electricity shortages within two years.
With the blessing of the three bigwigs, the story of "energy storage and AI" has also begun to ferment.
At the recent 2023 annual results meeting, Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL, expressed his vision for the company: he hopes to push human new energy to a new height. Obviously, it is not enough to rely on power batteries alone to realize this vision. Energy issues such as the challenges to power supply in the AI era are also the direction that CATL must overcome under the grand vision.
In May last year, CATL released a zero-auxiliary source PV-storage DC coupling solution composed of three modules: photovoltaic modules, energy storage cabinets, and photovoltaic storage converters. On April 9 this year, CATL released the world's first 5-year zero-attenuation energy storage system that can be mass-produced in Beijing.
Image source: CATL
Energy storage batteries are not easy to do
The importance of the energy storage business within CATL is not difficult to see from the financial report data.
According to the recently disclosed financial report data, CATL's revenue will exceed 400 billion yuan in 2023, of which the power battery system will achieve operating income of 285.252 billion yuan, accounting for 71.15% of operating income, and the energy storage battery system will achieve operating income of 59.901 billion yuan, accounting for 14.94%.
Although power batteries still firmly occupy the position of the main performance pillar of CATL, the growth rate of energy storage batteries (33.17%) is slightly faster than that of power batteries (20.57%). In addition, the gross profit margin of energy storage batteries was 23.79%, slightly higher than that of power battery systems of 22.7%.
The Energy Storage Application Branch of the China Physical and Chemical Power Industry Association predicts that by 2025, the scale of the new energy storage industry is expected to exceed one trillion yuan, and it is expected to be close to 3 trillion yuan by 2030.
The huge market space attracts more than CATL. However, for the difficulty of manufacturing energy storage batteries, Zeng Yuqun also mentioned at the performance meeting before, "Energy storage batteries are much easier to do than power batteries, so energy storage is not easy to do." The 1GWh large energy storage project requires 150w battery cells, plus other components, which is equivalent to a large aircraft, and the PPB level failure rate is not enough, and the consistency, safety, and long life are very important. ”
According to the data collected by the National Electrochemical Energy Storage Power Station Safety Monitoring Information Platform, in 2023, there will be 1,030 unplanned outages of electrochemical energy storage power stations per year, with an average of 29.12 hours of unplanned outages and 26.73 unplanned outages per unit of energy/100MWh. Among them, the quality of key equipment, systems and integrated installation of power stations is the main reason for the unplanned outage of the power station, and the number of unplanned outages accounts for more than 80%.
Wu Kai, chief scientist of CATL, said at the 2023 World Energy Storage Conference that the cost of trial and error in the energy storage industry is extremely high, so we must not follow the old path of pursuing speed first and then quality, and must adhere to high-quality development from the beginning.
In terms of energy efficiency, CATL's Tianheng energy storage system achieves a high energy of 6.25 MWh in a standard 20-foot container, increasing the energy density per unit area by 30% and reducing the footprint of the whole station by 20%. According to the official introduction, Tianheng energy storage system is equipped with energy storage special long-life zero-attenuation battery cell L series products, the battery cell uses lithium iron phosphate material, and the energy density can reach 430Wh/L.
The reason why zero attenuation can be achieved is that the material process can be adjusted, such as improving the compaction density of the material, and optimizing the discharge specific capacity, charge-discharge efficiency, porosity ratio, tap density, particle size, specific surface area and other indicators of battery materials (positive and negative electrodes, separators, electrolytes). Secondly, it is necessary to use more electrochemical active substances, and make breakthroughs and innovations through lithium supplementation, pre-lithium, doping and coating. This ensures that the battery preferentially consumes excess active material during the charge-discharge cycle, thus ensuring that its capacity does not decay.
However, from the perspective of industrialization, zero-attenuation technology faces problems such as high cost and low product yield. Implementing this technology requires high cost investment and relatively low yields in the production process. In addition, the technology is also very demanding in the production environment, especially the high chemical activity of the lithium metal involved in the "zero attenuation" battery, so the manufacturing equipment needs to have characteristics such as higher vacuum levels.
In terms of energy storage safety, CATL has established a dedicated quality management system for energy storage based on the complete cycle of technology development, testing and verification, operation monitoring, and safety failure analysis.
Image source: CATL
The system sets different security goals based on the application scenario, and then develops the corresponding security technology according to the goals. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the technology, CATL has also built a safety demonstration platform to simulate the safety demonstration of energy storage systems in different power grid scenarios and operating environments.
After the project is put into operation, CATL continuously monitors the operation status through AI risk monitoring and intelligent early warning, and uses the PSA model to quantify the failure probability of energy storage products throughout their life cycle.
Increasing the size of the "second battlefield"
Even if the energy storage battery is not so easy to do, it is still listed as the second battlefield by CATL, and it is also a new curve for its performance growth.
In fact, as early as 2011, at the beginning of CATL's business, it began to enter the energy storage market and participated in the Zhangbei energy storage project, the world's largest wind and solar storage and transportation demonstration project at that time. However, the real focus on energy storage was in 2018, when a separate energy storage division was established.
In 2020, CATL established two energy storage joint ventures with State Grid Integrated Energy Service Group, a subsidiary of State Grid, and participated in the construction of Jinjiang 100 MWh Energy Storage Power Station, the largest grid-side station-type battery energy storage power station in China at that time.
In 2021, CATL's energy storage business began to emerge, accounting for more than 10% of the company's total revenue, reaching 1.943 billion yuan, and began to disclose business-related data as "energy storage system" in the annual report.
In 2022, CATL established CATL Energy Storage Development Co., Ltd. with a sole proprietorship of 120 million yuan. In March 2023, CATL participated in the bidding for the first time in China as an integrator, officially starting the battle for energy storage system integration.
From 2018 to 2023, CATL's energy storage segment surged from 189 million yuan to nearly 60 billion yuan, and is now the company's second largest source of revenue.
In addition to cell and system integration, CATL is also deploying the energy storage market in different ways in multiple links.
Statistics show that by the end of 2023, CATL has invested in nearly 70 energy storage-related companies, with a total investment of more than 46.5 billion yuan, covering new energy, energy storage batteries, solar energy, energy storage equipment, battery packs/groups, BMS, PCS, EPC, energy storage technology services, new materials, upstream materials of the energy storage industry chain, etc.
It is worth noting that while CATL continues to develop its energy storage business, it has also encountered an old rival in the energy storage market - BYD.
The two heads aim at this huge cake, and the strategies they choose are not only to do upstream energy storage batteries, but also to get involved in downstream energy storage integration. The difference is that CATL's energy storage advantage focuses on battery cells, while BYD is good at integrated market-oriented play.
Since its birth in 2008, BYD Energy Storage has been vigorously expanding overseas markets. But the significant change in 2023 is that BYD has begun to exert its strength in the domestic large storage market.
In June 2023, at BYD's annual general meeting of shareholders, Chairman Wang Chuanfu said that in the future, it is necessary to highly combine the production capacity of automotive batteries and energy storage batteries, emphasizing the improvement of the status of energy storage business in BYD.
The Advanced Industry Research Institute has previously issued a view that the global energy storage market has entered a reshuffle period from a period of rapid development, and will continue in the next 1-2 years.
As CATL and BYD increase the energy storage market, there may be less and less room for second- and third-tier manufacturers to transform and survive.
(This article was first published on the Titanium Media App, author | Han Jingxian, editor - Zhang Min)