In the 18th century, American scientist Benjamin Franklin successfully "captured" lightning through kite experiments, and during the Industrial Revolution, the emergence of lead-acid batteries and lithium-ion batteries made it possible to store electricity. For thousands of years, human beings have explored hundreds of energy storage methods around different paths, and combined them with technology to innovate. Nowadays, new energy storage technology provides strong support for the new power system with new energy as the main body.
In 2024, the "development of new energy storage" will be written into the government work report for the first time, as an important equipment basis to promote the green and low-carbon transformation of energy, the new energy storage is like a huge "power bank", which can store the surplus electric energy of new energy such as solar energy and wind energy, "charge" when the electricity consumption is low, and "discharge" when the electricity consumption peaks.
On April 26, the 2024 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Conference - Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality Science and Technology Forum was held in Zhongguancun International Innovation Center, Chen Haisheng, director and researcher of the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with reporters that the development of new energy storage in the past five years has been very fast, and the new installed capacity in 2023 will increase by nearly 300% compared with 2022, and new energy storage is expected to become an important support or important subject of the power system in the future.
Play the role of "power bank".
"Energy storage is a process of storing energy in a certain form or equipment and releasing it when needed, and electricity and heat storage are common energy storage methods," Chen Haisheng said, energy storage mainly solves the problem of mismatch between energy production and demand in time, space and intensity.
In recent years, the proportion of renewable energy such as solar and wind energy in the entire power system has increased, and the intermittent and unstable nature of renewable energy has put forward higher requirements for energy storage. Li Xianxian, deputy director and researcher of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that "the proportion of renewable energy in the entire power grid will increase sharply in the future, and when the power system is transformed into renewable energy as the main body, the intermittency and instability of renewable energy will put forward higher requirements for energy storage."
Before the new type of energy storage, the traditional physical energy storage method represented by pumped storage dominated in the early stage. Chen Haisheng introduced, the traditional energy storage represented by pumped storage still accounted for 99% in 2017, this technology is mature, large-scale, low-cost, and widely used, but the site selection is limited by natural resource conditions, the construction needs two reservoirs and dams, there needs to be a certain gap between the reservoirs, and the construction period is also long, it takes 7-10 years, in addition, the regulation capacity is also limited.
With the increase in demand for energy storage, new energy storage methods such as electrochemical energy storage, compressed air energy storage, flywheel energy storage, heat storage, cold storage, and hydrogen storage have emerged in addition to pumped hydro storage.
In 2024, "developing new energy storage" will be written into the government work report for the first time, and it will be mentioned in "actively and steadily promoting carbon peak and carbon neutrality". "Energy storage is known as the key support technology of the energy revolution, and the most fundamental thing to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality is that fossil energy should be gradually transformed from the main energy to auxiliary energy, and renewable energy should gradually change from auxiliary energy to the main energy, and to achieve this transformation, we must solve the intermittency, instability and periodicity of renewable energy, and new energy storage is the key support technology to solve the large-scale utilization of renewable energy. Chen Haisheng said.
Compared with pumped hydro storage, the new energy storage has the advantages of short construction period, flexible site selection, and fast response speed. "This type of technology has a short construction period, can be completed in 6 to 24 months, flexible site selection, strong adjustment ability, and the development of new energy storage in the past five years has been very fast, and the new installed capacity in 2023 will increase by nearly 300% compared with 2022."
According to data from the National Energy Administration, by the end of 2023, the cumulative installed capacity of new energy storage projects that have been completed and put into operation across the country will reach 31.39 million kilowatts/66.87 million kilowatt hours, with an average energy storage duration of 2.1 hours. In 2023, the new installed capacity will be about 22.6 million kW/48.7 million kWh, an increase of more than 260% from the end of 2022.
There are a wide range of application scenarios
In January 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) jointly issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of New Energy Storage", which proposes that by 2025, new energy storage will enter the stage of large-scale development from the initial stage of commercialization, and will have the conditions for large-scale commercial application, and by 2030, new energy storage will be fully market-oriented.
"The key bottlenecks faced by new energy storage technologies mainly include the efficiency, cost, life and safety of energy storage. In addition, the R&D and application of large-scale energy storage technology is also an important challenge. Yu Fenghui, an economist and new finance expert, said in an interview with a reporter from Beijing Business Daily that in response to these problems, some scientific research achievements or technological innovations that are currently trying to solve include: research and development of more efficient batteries, research and development of new physical energy storage technologies, such as flow batteries, solid-state batteries, etc., and the development of safer energy storage systems.
At present, the application of new energy storage is mainly concentrated in the power system. In Feicheng, Shandong, the world's first 300 MW advanced compressed air energy storage national demonstration project has been completed and the system commissioning work is being carried out. In Shenzhen, Guangdong, the Guangdong Energy Group's semi-solid-state battery energy storage demonstration project is also accelerating.
Chen Haisheng said that compressed air energy storage is close to the characteristics of pumped storage, the scale is larger, a single machine can achieve 100 megawatts to 300 megawatts, but its advantage is that the life is longer, 40 to 50 years of life, the energy storage cycle is not limited, as long as the gas storage device does not leak, it will not cause attenuation, in addition, the cost is relatively low.
In addition to compressed air energy storage, flow batteries also have strong application space as a new energy storage technology. Li Xianfeng introduced that flow battery energy storage technology is basically used on a large scale on the power generation side, especially in the future, medium and long energy storage should be more promising, its advantage lies in safety, the scale can be very large, lithium-ion batteries do not exceed 4 hours, flow batteries are basically 4-10 hours.
Nowadays, it has become an industry consensus to accelerate the large-scale, industrialization and market-oriented development of new energy storage. "New energy storage is expected to become an important support or important subject of the power system in the future", Chen Haisheng believes that the power system is now basically "source-grid-load" three subjects, and the follow-up will increase "storage" into "source-grid-load-storage" four subjects, new energy storage will account for 10%-15% of the entire power system economy, for the trillion-level strategic emerging industries, renewable energy storage is an important growth point of new quality productivity.
At present, in the early stage of large-scale construction of new energy storage, the unclear assessment requirements and compensation mechanism of new energy storage operation have also become one of the reasons affecting its utilization level. In April this year, the National Energy Administration issued the "Notice on Promoting the Grid-connected and Dispatching Application of New Energy Storage", which aims to further standardize the grid-connected management, improve the dispatching mechanism, clarify the technical requirements, promote the new energy storage to better play a systematic regulatory role, and provide solid support for accelerating the construction of a new power system. "In the future, further innovation in energy storage costs and institutional mechanisms is needed to truly promote the industrialization of large-scale energy storage. Li Xianfeng said.
Beijing Business Daily reporter Li Haiyan