Summary

In 2021, domestic energy storage battery shipments will reach 48GWh, a year-on-year increase of 2.6 times.

Since China proposed the dual carbon goal in 2021, the development of domestic new energy industries such as wind and solar storage and new energy vehicles has been changing with each passing day. As an important means to achieve the dual carbon goal, domestic energy storage will also usher in a golden period of policy and market development. In 2021, thanks to the soaring installed capacity of overseas energy storage power stations and the management policy of domestic wind and solar energy storage, domestic energy storage will achieve explosive growth.

According to statistics from the Lithium Battery Research Institute of the High-tech Industrial Research Institute, domestic energy storage battery shipments will reach 48GWh in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 2.6 times; of which power energy storage battery shipments will be 29GWh, a year-on-year increase of 4.39 times compared to 6.6GWh in 2020.

At the same time, the energy storage industry is also facing many problems along the way: in 2021, the upstream cost of lithium batteries has skyrocketed and battery production capacity has been tight, resulting in an increase in system costs instead of falling; domestic and foreign lithium battery energy storage power stations have occasionally caught fire and exploded, which is safe Accidents cannot be completely eradicated; domestic business models are not fully mature, enterprises are not willing to invest, and energy storage is “heavy construction over operation”, and the phenomenon of idle assets is common; energy storage configuration time is mostly 2 hours, and a high proportion of large-capacity wind and solar power grids are connected to 4 The demand for long-term energy storage over an hour is becoming more and more urgent…

The general trend of diversified demonstration of energy storage technology, the proportion of installed capacity of non-lithium-ion energy storage technology is expected to expand

Compared with previous policies, the “Implementation Plan” has written more about the investment and demonstration of diversified energy storage technologies, and explicitly mentioned the optimization of various technical routes such as sodium-ion batteries, lead-carbon batteries, flow batteries, and hydrogen (ammonia) energy storage. Design research. Secondly, technical routes such as 100-megawatt compressed air energy storage, 100-megawatt flow battery, sodium ion, solid-state lithium-ion battery, and liquid metal battery are the key directions of technical equipment research in the energy storage industry during the 14th Five-Year Plan.

In general, the “Implementation Plan” clarifies the development principles of common but differentiated demonstration of various energy storage technology routes, and only stipulates the planning goal of reducing system costs by more than 30% in 2025. This essentially gives the right to choose a specific route to the market players, and the future development of energy storage will be cost- and market-demand-oriented. There may be two reasons behind the formation of the regulations.

First, the skyrocketing cost of lithium batteries and upstream raw materials and insufficient production capacity in 2021 have exposed the potential risks of over-reliance on a single technical route: the rapid release of downstream demand for new energy vehicles, two-wheelers, and energy storage has resulted in rising upstream raw material prices and capacity supply. Insufficient, resulting in energy storage and other downstream applications “grabbing production capacity, grabbing raw materials”. Secondly, the actual life of lithium battery products is not long, the problem of fire and explosion is occasional, and the space for cost reduction is difficult to solve in the short term, which also makes it unable to fully meet the needs of all energy storage applications. With the construction of new power systems, energy storage will become an indispensable new energy infrastructure, and the global power storage demand is likely to enter the TWh era. The current supply level of lithium batteries cannot meet the demand for energy storage infrastructure of new power systems in the future.

The second is the continuous iterative improvement of other technical routes, and the technical conditions for engineering demonstration are now available. Take the liquid flow energy storage highlighted in the Implementation Plan as an example. Compared with lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries have no phase change in the reaction process, can be deeply charged and discharged, and can withstand high current charging and discharging. The most prominent feature of flow batteries is that the cycle life is extremely long, the minimum can be 10,000 times, and some technical routes can even reach more than 20,000 times, and the overall service life can reach 20 years or more, which is very suitable for large-capacity renewable energy. Energy storage scene. Since 2021, Datang Group, State Power Investment Corporation, China General Nuclear Power and other power generation groups have released plans for the construction of 100-megawatt flow battery energy storage power stations. The first phase of the energy storage peak shaving power station project has entered the single module commissioning stage, reflecting that the flow battery has the feasibility of a 100-megawatt demonstration technology.

From the perspective of technological maturity, lithium-ion batteries are still far ahead of other new energy storages in terms of scale effect and industrial support, so there is a high probability that they will still be the mainstream of new energy storage installations in the next 5-10 years. However, the absolute scale and relative proportion of non-lithium-ion energy storage routes are expected to expand. Other technical routes, such as sodium-ion batteries, compressed air energy storage, lead-carbon batteries, and metal-air batteries, are expected to increase in initial investment cost, kWh cost, safety, etc. Or many aspects show great development potential, and it is expected to form a complementary and mutually supportive relationship with lithium-ion batteries.

Focusing on application scenarios, domestic long-term energy storage demand is expected to achieve a qualitative breakthrough

According to the energy storage time, energy storage application scenarios can be roughly divided into short-term energy storage (<1 hour), medium and long-term energy storage (1-4 hours), and long-term energy storage (≥4 hours, and some foreign countries define ≥8 hours) ) three categories. At present, domestic energy storage applications are mainly concentrated in short-term energy storage and medium and long-term energy storage. Due to factors such as investment costs, technology and business models, the long-term energy storage market is still in the cultivation stage.

At the same time, developed countries including the United States and the United Kingdom have released a series of policy subsidies and technical plans for long-term energy storage technology, including the “Energy Storage Grand Challenge Roadmap” issued by the United States Department of Energy, and the plans of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the United Kingdom. Allocating £68 million to support a demonstration project of the country’s long-term energy storage technology route. In addition to government officials, overseas non-governmental organizations are also actively taking action, such as the long-term energy storage council. The organization was initiated by 25 international giants of energy, technology, and public utilities including Microsoft, BP, Siemens, etc., and strives to deploy 85TWh-140TWh of long-term energy storage installations worldwide by 2040, with an investment of US$1.5 trillion to 3 trillion. Dollar.

Academician Zhang Huamin of the Dahua Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences mentioned that after 2030, in the new domestic power system, the proportion of renewable energy connected to the grid will be greatly increased, and the role of power grid peak regulation and frequency regulation will be transferred to energy storage power stations. In continuous rainy weather, due to the significant reduction in the installed capacity of thermal power plants, to ensure the safe and stable power supply of the new power system, only 2-4 hours of energy storage time cannot meet the energy consumption needs of a zero-carbon society at all, and it takes a long time. The energy storage power station provides the power required by the grid load.

This “Implementation Plan” spends more ink to emphasize the research and project demonstration of long-term energy storage technology: “Expand the application of various energy storage forms. Combined with the resource conditions of various regions and the demand for different forms of energy, promote long-term energy storage, The construction of new energy storage projects such as hydrogen energy storage, thermal (cold) energy storage, etc. will promote the development of various forms of energy storage. , Iron-chromium flow battery, zinc-Australia flow battery and other industrial applications”, “Renewable energy production of hydrogen storage (ammonia), hydrogen-electric coupling and other complex energy storage demonstration applications”. It is expected that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the development level of large-capacity long-term energy storage industries such as hydrogen (ammonia) energy storage, flow batteries and advanced compressed air will rise significantly.

Focus on tackling key problems in smart control technology, and the integration of information and communication technology and hardware is expected to accelerate, which will benefit the comprehensive energy service industry

In the past, the traditional power system architecture belonged to a typical chain structure, and the power supply and power load management were realized by centralized dispatching. In the new power system, new energy power generation is the main output. The increased volatility on the output side makes it impossible to control and accurately predict on demand, and the impact of power consumption caused by the large-scale popularization of new energy vehicles and energy storage on the load side is superimposed. The obvious feature is that the power grid system is connected to massive distributed power sources and flexible direct current. In this context, the traditional centralized dispatching concept will be transformed into an integrated integration of source, network, load and storage, and a flexible adjustment mode. In order to realize the transformation, the digitization, informatization and intelligence of all aspects of power and energy are technical topics that cannot be avoided.

Energy storage is a part of the new energy infrastructure in the future. At present, the integration of hardware and information and communication technology and other software is more prominent: the existing power stations have insufficient security risk analysis and control of the battery management system, extensive detection, data distortion, data delay, and data loss. Perceived data failure; how to effectively coordinate aggregation and deployment management of user-side energy storage load resources, allowing users to gain more benefits through virtual power plants participating in electricity market transactions; digital information technologies such as big data, blockchain, cloud computing, and energy storage assets The degree of integration is relatively shallow, the interaction between energy storage and other links in the power system is weak, and the technology and model for data analysis and mining of added value are immature. With the popularity and scale of energy storage in the 14th Five-Year Plan, the digitalization, informatization and intelligent management needs of energy storage systems will reach a very urgent stage.

In this context, the “Implementation Plan” has determined that the intelligent control technology of energy storage will be regarded as one of the three key directions for tackling key problems of new energy storage core technology and equipment during the 14th Five-Year Plan, which specifically includes “centralized tackling key technologies of large-scale energy storage system cluster intelligent collaborative control”. , carry out research on collaborative aggregation of distributed energy storage systems, and focus on solving the grid control problems caused by high proportion of new energy access. Relying on big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies, carry out multi-functional reuse of energy storage, Research on key technologies in the fields of demand-side response, virtual power plants, cloud energy storage, and market-based transactions.” The digitization, informatization and intelligence of energy storage in the future will depend on the maturity of energy storage intelligent dispatching technology in different fields.