"Our first-day contract value exceeded 9 billion yuan. A few days ago, at the site of the 2nd China International Energy Storage Conference 2024 (hereinafter referred to as the "conference") held in Nanjing, Xing Zhengjun, president of Linyuan Group, excitedly introduced the achievements of its subsidiary Linyuan Energy Storage to the reporter of the Public Securities Journal. The conference gathered more than 600 energy storage companies, including CATL, Shenghong Kinetic Energy, Canadian Solar, etc., to compete on the same stage and "show their muscles". On the first day of the exhibition, many popular booths were surrounded by "water".
The site of the 2nd China International Energy Storage Conference 2024. Photo by a reporter from this newspaper
Behind this, as an important infrastructure to promote energy transition and build a new power system, new energy storage has become a strategic emerging industry in mainland China. The reporter learned from this conference that Jiangsu Province has built a relatively complete new energy storage industry ecology, gathered nearly 200 key enterprises of various new energy storage and supporting facilities, and as of the end of March 2024, the province has built and put into operation 1.11 million kilowatts of new energy storage. Nationwide, driven by multiple factors such as policy, technology and capital, the energy storage industry is developing rapidly.
"Double carbon" ignites a new type of energy storage heat
"It's crazy!" For the current hot scene of the energy storage industry, many staff members of energy storage companies who participated in this conference expressed similar feelings.
According to Qichacha data, in 2019, the number of newly registered energy storage-related enterprises in the country was 7,100, but by 2023, this number will expand 10 times to 74,100. Since the beginning of this year, the number has exceeded 23,000. At the same time, the number of financings related to energy storage also increased from 42 in 2019 to 290 in 2023, and the total amount of disclosed financings increased from 1.414 billion yuan to 28.719 billion yuan.
What exactly is energy storage?" You can think of it as a large power bank. Hu Rui, general manager of Shenghong Kinetic Energy's strategic marketing department, made a vivid analogy, "At night, we store cheap valley electricity into this 'power bank', and then release the stored electricity during the daytime peak electricity consumption." According to its introduction, the energy storage system is suitable for the power system's generation, transmission, distribution, use, dispatching and other links, and has the effect of improving the quality of the power grid such as improving the characteristics of renewable energy, peak shaving and valley filling, peak regulation and frequency regulation, and demand-side response.
Zhu Junpeng, president of Jiangsu Energy Storage Industry Association, told this reporter that the rapid development of energy storage, especially new energy storage, is inseparable from the joint effect of policy support and market demand: "On the one hand, in the context of global energy transition, in order to overcome the instability of clean energy power generation, the demand for energy storage systems on the source grid side is growing rapidly; On the other hand, policies around new energy storage have been introduced in various places, laying a good foundation for the development of related industries. ”
Zhu Junpeng, president of Jiangsu Energy Storage Industry Association, photo provided by the interviewee
Since the beginning of this year, the policies around new energy storage have been favorable. The 2024 Government Work Report clearly stated for the first time that it is necessary to "develop new energy storage". The National Development and Reform Commission, the National Energy Administration and other departments have also focused on accelerating the planning and construction of a new energy system, and have successively introduced a number of policy measures, all of which involve the development of the new energy storage industry.
New energy storage refers to energy storage technologies that mainly export electricity in the form of traditional energy storage (mainly pumped hydro storage), including electrochemical energy storage, flywheel energy storage, electromagnetic energy storage, hydrogen storage and energy storage. Among them, lithium-ion battery energy storage, the main representative of electrochemical energy storage, occupies an important position in the new energy storage application in mainland China. "The current market share of lithium-ion battery energy storage is about 95%, because the related industrial chain is mature and has a large cost advantage. Zhu Junpeng said. According to the forecast of the Advanced Industry Research Institute (GGII), global energy storage battery shipments are expected to exceed 400GWh in 2025.
"For energy storage companies, it is now the stage of big waves and sands, and only enterprises with strong capital and technical force can develop steadily. Zhu Junpeng believes that with the gradual clearing of backward production capacity, the market concentration of the energy storage industry will be further improved.
"Reducing costs and increasing efficiency" drives technological changes
Entering the reshuffle period, "volume" has become a consensus among participants in the new energy storage industry. The heads of many exhibitors at this conference told reporters that competition has accelerated the technological progress of the entire industry.
An important direction of the "volume" of the new energy storage industry is to expand the capacity of battery cells. In the process of visiting energy storage companies, the reporter found that the competition around the battery cell link is particularly fierce. At the site of this conference, the single capacity of 314Ah battery cells began to occupy the "C position", and Shenghong Kinetic Energy alone brought a variety of battery cell products with a capacity of 300Ah+.
"Although 280Ah cells are still the mainstream in energy storage projects, 300Ah+ large-capacity cells have become a new trend and are gradually replacing 280Ah cells. In front of a distributed liquid-cooled all-in-one product exhibited by Yubang Zhiyuan, the main body of Yubang Power's energy storage business, Cheng Mohan, the head of the company's marketing center, pointed to the gaps on both sides of the battery compartment and told reporters that this product was designed to consider the application scenarios of 314Ah battery cells in the future.
"The larger the capacity of the cell, the greater the energy density of the energy storage system, which is one of the important trends in the development of the energy storage system. Zhu Junpeng told reporters that with the scale of a single energy storage project in mainland China moving from the MWh era to the GWh era, coupled with the continuous maturity of technology, battery cells are progressing in the direction of large capacity, "For enterprises, the biggest driving force behind is 'reducing costs and increasing efficiency'." Because the energy storage industry is more sensitive to price, the larger the investment in equipment in the early stage, the longer the payback period. ”
Generally, the energy storage system consists of an energy storage unit and a monitoring and dispatching management unit, and the battery cell is an important part of the battery compartment in the energy storage unit. In recent years, the iteration rate of large-capacity batteries has been astonishing. 300Ah+ cells have not yet become the mainstream, CATL, BYD, EVE Lithium Energy, Trina Energy Storage, Nandu Power and other companies have announced the start of the layout of 500Ah+ cells, of which the largest single cell capacity has even exceeded 1000Ah.
Another direction of "volume" is to increase the layout of industrial and commercial energy storage solutions.
"The competition in the residential energy storage market is too fierce, and everyone wants to find opportunities in commercial energy storage, which also belongs to the user side. The person in charge of an exhibitor told reporters that the company's original business was to focus on the overseas household storage market.
"The first is the new energy distribution and storage on the power generation side, the second is the independent energy storage on the grid side, and the third is the industrial and commercial energy storage on the user side. Zhang Rucheng, an analyst of the new energy industry at Nanjing Securities, said that the domestic energy storage application is currently divided into three major parts, "Among them, new energy distribution and storage mainly rely on new energy power generation to match; The business model of independent energy storage covers capacity leasing, ancillary services, peak-to-valley arbitrage, and capacity compensation, etc., and the specific business model varies according to the rules of the electricity market in different regions. Industrial and commercial energy storage is based on industrial and commercial electricity prices for peak and valley arbitrage. ”
CATL exhibits the Tianheng energy storage system. Photo by a reporter from this newspaper
The competition for C&I energy storage is heating up. At the conference site, industrial and commercial energy storage systems with a single cabin capacity of more than 5MWh frequently appeared. "It not only improves the space utilization, controls the cost and price of the product, but also increases the connection method on the basis of 1.0. Zhang Guangchun, senior vice president of Canadian Solar, said that the power and capacity of the SolBank3.0 energy storage system exhibited by the company this time reached 2.5MW/5MWh. CATL brought the world's first five-year zero-attenuation energy storage system that can be mass-produced not long ago - Tianheng. The energy storage system has increased the capacity of a 20-foot energy storage container to 6.25MWh. However, many companies said that the mass production of large-capacity industrial and commercial energy storage systems still needs some time.
Self-developed "3S" strengthens software and hardware synergy
Increasing capacity of battery cells and energy storage systems raises the question of how to ensure product safety. Huang Hao, chief operating officer of Zhuoyang Energy Storage, pointed out that there are many industrial and commercial energy storage projects and a wide regional distribution, which puts forward higher requirements for the safety of overall operation and maintenance.
Among them, the thermal instability of lithium-ion batteries and the potential safety hazards of flammability and explosion are problems that most energy storage companies must solve at present. In Hu Rui's view, the task of the energy storage system itself is to ensure that the power grid can operate safely and reliably, so its own safety must be in place, "to effectively prevent thermal runaway." When Shu Yinbiao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, shared his views at this conference, he also emphasized that "the energy storage system itself should be safe and reliable".
This has to mention an important part of the energy storage system: BMS (battery management system), which is mainly responsible for the monitoring, evaluation, protection and balancing of the battery. "BMS is a bit like the body's white blood cells. Huang Lifei, manager of the smart lithium business who has been deployed in the BMS business for many years, described to reporters that in his opinion, BMS plays a key role in the safe and stable operation of the entire energy storage system.
In addition to the BMS, there is also an "S" role in the energy storage system that is also crucial - EMS (Energy Management System). "You can think of it as the brain of an energy storage system. Chen Zijian, chairman of Zhongke Haiao, told reporters that EMS is mainly responsible for data acquisition, network monitoring and energy scheduling and other functions, which is the key to a more intelligent energy storage system. In addition, the PCS (energy storage converter) that affects the service life of the battery, controls the charging and discharging process of the energy storage battery pack, and carries out AC and DC conversion, together constitute the "3S" of control software and hardware coordination in the energy storage system.
At the site of this conference, the reporter observed that more and more energy storage companies are making efforts to develop the integrated research and development of "3S". In the eyes of many practitioners, system integration is more competitive than battery cells.
At the booth of Yineng Digital, the company used the expression "compared with traditional fully integrated manufacturers, the full-stack self-developed core components of Yineng" when promoting one of its industrial and commercial energy storage systems, and emphasized that the BMS discharge depth of this product can reach 95%, the PCS conversion efficiency can reach 98.7%, and the maximum efficiency of EMS to reduce the loss of auxiliary systems can reach 90%.
"The EMS in the distributed all-in-one machine exhibited on site is independently developed by Yubang Zhiyuan, and the BMS is jointly developed with external enterprises and has obtained the corresponding authorization. Cheng Mohan told reporters that taking the "3S" technology into their own hands can make the collaboration between the software and hardware of the energy storage system more efficient, "and the potential failure rate will be lower." ”
Yubang Zhiyuan exhibited a distributed liquid-cooled all-in-one machine. Photo by a reporter from this newspaper
Of course, there are also companies that choose to avoid the highly competitive lithium-ion battery energy storage field. The all-vanadium flow energy storage system brought by Linyuan Energy Storage at this conference is eye-catching. "High safety, long life, can be pre-installed, no attenuation, no pollution...... Xing Zhengjun reported many advantages of his own products, he told reporters, compared with all vanadium liquid flow technology and lithium battery technology, the biggest advantage is that it has a long service life and is suitable for long-term energy storage, "At present, the energy storage time of most lithium-ion battery energy storage systems is about two hours, and the energy storage time of our products can be extended with the expansion of storage tanks." ”
Xing Zhengjun has a clear understanding of the development direction of the all-vanadium flow energy storage system: "It is difficult to quickly replace lithium-ion battery energy storage in the short term, but I believe that it will have an indispensable position in the field of energy storage in the near future." Regarding the multiple branches of energy storage technology, Zhao Tianshou, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that the existing energy storage technologies have their own advantages and limitations. In this regard, Zhu Junpeng has a similar view: "For different application scenarios, different technologies will be useful. Healthy competition will be the premise for the high-quality development of the energy storage industry. ”
Reporter Chen Zhi, intern reporter Li Manhong, Huang Qinqin