What is energy storage?
Energy storage is to store electricity and use it when it is needed.
And the process of electricity from production to final use is as follows:
Production of electricity (power plants, power stations) — transmission of electricity (grid company) —- use of electricity (users)
In the above three links, energy storage can be established, so energy storage can be divided into: power generation energy storage; grid energy storage; user energy storage according to application scenarios.
The energy storage industry chain is relatively simple. The upstream is the equipment manufacturer, the midstream is the integrated manufacturer, and the downstream is various applications. The upstream link is the direction that needs to be focused on.
energy storage system cost
The battery accounted for the highest proportion, reaching 60%, followed by PCS (converter), EMS (energy management system) and BMS (battery management system), accounting for 20%, 10% and 5% respectively.
1) Battery segment: The industry concentration is gradually increasing. In the future, it will develop towards high safety, long life and low cost. Lithium iron phosphate will be the mainstream path, and it is expected to be led by leading power battery manufacturers;
2) PCS link: pay attention to the three core competencies (iterative cost reduction capability, brand power & bankability, channel capability), and judge the future competition pattern and the convergence of photovoltaic inverters;
3) EMS link: It needs to interact with the power grid. The existing EMS companies are mainly from the State Grid Department. In the future, the core competitiveness of EMS depends on software development capabilities and energy optimization strategy design capabilities;
4) BMS link: the current technology maturity is low, lack of industry standards, and the competitive landscape is scattered. In the future, the energy storage battery BMS will likely continue the power battery BMS market pattern;
5) System integration link: There are many domestic system integrators players, and companies with integration capabilities, operation and maintenance services, local channels and brand power will win.
Judging from the current electricity consumption environment dominated by thermal power, the power generated by the power plant—transmitted to the power grid—is transmitted to the user for use, and there is no energy storage in the middle. A small number of power grid companies will use pumped storage to adjust peak frequency and fill in valleys. That is, when there is a lot of electricity at night, electricity (with a water pump) is used to pump the water downstream of the hydropower station to the upstream to generate electricity.
Why store energy?
With the updating and upgrading of the energy system and the advancement of the dual-carbon goal, renewable energy, led by solar energy and wind energy, has begun to be widely used. Because wind power and photovoltaics are greatly affected by weather and have great instability, energy storage technology plays a crucial role. Keheng new energy manufacturers believe that the combination of wind and solar energy storage is likely to become the development trend of new energy in the future.
From a global perspective: the U.S. energy storage market will explode in 2020, becoming the third largest energy storage market in the world. The centralized implementation of public utility energy storage projects will be an important increase from 2021 to 2024. At the same time, the unstable power supply will stimulate users’ demand for energy storage. ; Europe started the first year of energy storage in 2019, and reached a new high in 2020, leaping to become the world’s largest cumulative energy storage market, with Germany and Britain leading the way, Germany is the world’s largest user energy storage market, mainly due to the high electricity prices for residents, and the subsidy policy has shifted to households. Due to energy storage, the UK is mainly driven by the deployment of large-scale energy storage projects; South Korea is affected by the safety of energy storage batteries, and newly installed capacity has declined, but it is still the world’s second largest energy storage market in 2020.
From the perspective of my country’s development: as the proportion of renewable energy power generation increases, problems such as consumption, transmission and distribution, and fluctuations appear, and the rigid demand for energy storage is gradually taking shape. nearly 100 times the rate of growth.
The following are the 15 energy storage industry research reports:
1. After more than ten years of development, electric energy storage has gone from the laboratory to the early stage of commercialization, and now it is gradually transitioning from the early stage of commercialization to large-scale. This stage has several characteristics. First, in terms of technological development, the cost performance of some energy storage devices can already be promoted and applied. The energy storage required by the power system more than ten years ago has three elements: long life, low cost, and high safety. Now long life and low cost are basically available. But high security still has the last mile. In terms of research and development, almost all energy storage technologies in my country are involved. In terms of applications, we have tried various applications on the power supply, power grid, and user side. In terms of business models, it is indeed a shortcoming, and there is a long time to explore, and other countries in the world have the same problems.
2. Pumped storage is still the main force. The development of new energy storage is very rapid, and its growth rate is much faster than that of pumped hydro storage. Among the new energy storage technologies, lithium-ion batteries have the highest proportion of energy storage technologies and the fastest growth. Of course, there is a unique condition for the simultaneous development of electric vehicles. However, energy storage technology is not limited to lithium-ion batteries. In the application stage, there are lead-carbon batteries, sodium-sulfur batteries and liquid-sulfur batteries. In the demonstration stage, there are compressed air, sodium-ion batteries, supercapacitors and nano-nickel batteries. The laboratory stage has flywheels, superconductivity, phase-change hydrogen, and a non-pumped gravity energy storage, as well as some new types of batteries. In what form of energy is energy storage stored, it is divided into physical energy storage, electromagnetic energy storage, electrochemical energy storage, thermal energy storage, and chemical fuel energy storage.
3. Lithium-ion battery technology has progressed the fastest, and the cost performance is close to the stage of popularization and application. It is mainly driven by the demand for electric vehicles. The lithium battery research and development team is the largest, the investment is the most, and the effect is the most obvious. The performance of lithium batteries can cover almost all application scenarios of the power system, or it can be used in most application scenarios. Whether it is power measurement, grid measurement, user measurement, peak regulation, frequency regulation, consumption, emergency construction, backup, black start. But the major shortcoming is that the time for consumption is not enough. The capacity is generally four hours, which is not sufficient in the windless season. Safety issues, there are so many fires in South Korea, people are sometimes a little afraid of lithium batteries, and electric bicycles are also on fire from time to time, but the whole world is working hard on this matter, including solid-state batteries as the main direction, and some integrated Technology, management technology, fire protection technology, early warning technology, etc. make it safer, and this is possible to solve.
4. The breadth of use of lead-carbon batteries ranks second. The industrial chain is very complete, and many lead-acid battery factories will soon be able to produce lead-acid batteries. The safety is still water-based, and it is not easy to burn and explode. This has advantages and is a transitional technology.
5. The third is the liquid sulfur battery, which is safe, non-combustible, and has a long cycle life. Power and capacity can be independent. When configuring, if the scene requires high power, you can intentionally reduce some unnecessary investment. The power and hours of lithium-ion batteries are basically fixed, and this can be adjusted. The short board is that the efficiency is relatively low, and there is a lot of heat and auxiliary motor consumption. The energy density is relatively low, the liquid sulfur battery energy storage station occupies a large area, the price cannot be reduced, and the cost is difficult to determine, so it cannot be used in electric vehicles. However, international research and development has not stopped and it has not been abandoned, and the United States has even been used as a major research and development direction. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that there are many materials to choose from in this system. There is no ceiling in the research and development space, and it has an advantage over lithium-ion batteries on a long-term scale.
6. Other batteries are in the laboratory stage, including liquid metal air and organic batteries, which may be low cost and high energy density. Some systems still have room for exploration and are still in the basic research stage. However, the progress of sodium-ion batteries is relatively fast, and it takes several years from the laboratory to the demonstration application. Because its system is basically the same as the redox reaction mechanism of lithium batteries. There is not much obstacle for the team that makes lithium-ion batteries to switch to sodium-ion batteries. With the constraints of lithium resources, the uncertainty of lithium carbonate prices, and the lack of too many constraints on sodium ion resources, the outstanding benefits of this may appear. It should be said that this is an important strategy for energy storage technology. The spare tire must be available at the national level, but because the industry chain is not yet mature, and the material system has not been fully focused and finalized, in theory, it is safer than lithium-ion batteries, so its research direction is also somewhat similar to lithium-ion batteries. We have to make a fuss about solids and electrolytes, so this road may still take a while.
7. Compressed air can be used in all the needs of our entire power system. It is characterized by its dependence on electromechanical speed, because it uses generators, compressors, etc., and the response speed is relatively slow. In addition, it has many rotating keys and some irrecoverable losses, so the efficiency is relatively low. In addition, the price reduction space is limited. But it has a particularly big advantage, that is, the use of caves can be very large. If our high proportion of energy needs to be consumed on a large scale and on a large scale, electrochemical batteries will have difficulties. It has geographical limitations though.
8. The use space of the flywheel is relatively small, mainly in the improvement of the user’s power quality and the power support and support of some booths. The energy density is indeed too low. In addition, the technical threshold required for rotary keys is very high. Because the energy it stores is defined by the speed and mass of the flywheel, if you want to achieve high energy density, you need a very high rotational speed, and tens of thousands have already started. Quality and safety are contradictory requirements. If the quality is too large, the speed can be increased, and whether the safety after the speed is increased has a high technical threshold. In addition, the application space is also limited, and mainstream application scenarios cannot rely on it.
9. Super capacitors are much better than flywheels, but they are still expensive. The problem is the same, the power density is high, the energy density is low, and there are higher requirements for control. Therefore, the market space is limited, but the technological progress is still relatively fast.
10. The other two technologies have great potential in the future. One is the hot land, the international energy storage development roadmap, noting that he has such a high proportion in 20, 30 years or more. Long-term-scale energy storage technology is indispensable, and the UK pays special attention to thermal energy storage, because its offshore wind power is affected by seasonal changes. The conditions in our country are not the same. If photovoltaics are the mainstay, there will be no seasonal energy storage during the day and night. Therefore, we don’t pay much attention to him now. Now it is mainly about solar thermal power generation. In our energy consumption, such as air conditioning, heating accounts for a very high proportion. These can be solved by heat storage technology. This space is still very large, but because the time between electricity and heat is very tight and the gap is too large, it seems that everyone has not seen a big market for this application space, so there are relatively few researchers. After a few years, it may be possible Gradually, a considerable number of R&D personnel will be invested in this part of the research. The other is hydrogen, which can be stored across seasons and can be replaced by liquid fuels and gaseous fuels. Traditional gas-fired engines and engines can be used, but the technical and financial thresholds, and people’s fears about its safety, will all be his development and research process. barriers in. We must sort out the technical roadmap for the development of hydrogen in our country, because hydrogen involves the four major links of generation, storage, transmission, and use, and there may be hundreds of routes. In the end, our national conditions, the state of our infrastructure, and our needs , which technical routes are worthy of key research, and top-level design should be done well, otherwise hundreds of energy will be too scattered, and the effect of return on investment will not be good.
11. In general, pumped storage is still the main force among all kinds of energy storage, but the development of new energy storage will increase. The battery is the most valuable energy storage technology, and it will also become the focus of research and development and application on a long-term scale. As far as the lithium battery industry is concerned, there are links such as minerals, materials, monomers, pack and system integration, application, and recycling, and the industry chain is very long. However, our country has the advantages of talent gathering, complete production chain and strong capacity for expansion. Our original production line equipment is backward, basically high-end production lines are imported from Japan or South Korea, and now we are gradually replacing them. This bottleneck has almost disappeared. There may be some parts that need to be paid attention to in the next step, that is, the recycling of retired batteries and the regeneration of materials. The current focus of this part is still not enough, the investment is still relatively small, and the future space is relatively large, and this is also required. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the national key R&D plan focused on lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries and cascade utilization, as well as compressed air. Some layouts have been made for forward-looking technologies such as ultra-electricity, solid state, liquid state, metal, flywheel, and sea pumping, which are basically achieved through the work of the 13th Five-Year Plan. The goals we set at that time, the cycle life, cost, efficiency and other indicators of lithium batteries have all reached expectations. But there are still shortcomings in security. The national key research and development plan mainly focuses on breakthroughs in safety, and in addition, the cycle life is longer, and the recycling part has also begun to pay attention.
12. In terms of the hard technology of energy storage, the front is the ontology technology. In fact, there are integration technology, safety technology, and operation management technology. We all have room for improvement in these aspects, including integrated topology and communication architecture. , cooling system, security diagnosis, early warning, isolation, fire protection, operation and maintenance management, cloud management, virtualization and aggregation, multi-scenario reuse, etc., all have room for improvement. In this regard, the European Union is especially represented internationally, and this is the focus of his research and development. In terms of applications, power sources, power grids, and users all reflect different concerns. For example, power sources pay more attention to renewable energy consumption, power grids hope to store energy safely, and peak shaving. When the user wants to integrate with multiple networks, it serves as an important buff. The transportation network, the air network, and the interconversion link on the time and space scales.
13. The current dilemma of the application is still the business model, whether it can make money. Status, business model, and electricity price constraints. The problem behind it is that the identity and status are uncertain, and the policy is somewhat discontinuous. In addition, the return mechanism needs to be determined, which is a common problem in the world. Of course, we have an electric power system and electric and electric power market reforms in dynamic. In fact, our country has issued guidance on energy storage at the national level since 2017. Looking back at these documents, we can see that the judgment on the situation at that time was relatively accurate, and it was an industry encouraged by the state.
14. In terms of investment, there are mainly two aspects: one is to be a very mature leading manufacturer of power batteries, and the other is to be a very mature manufacturer of photovoltaic inverters.
The energy storage market will undoubtedly greatly increase the demand for batteries. This is relatively certain, so we can mainly focus on the related tracks that are already very mature. On the one hand, high-certainty and low-cost battery providers, such as CATL, BYD, Yiwei Lithium, Paineng Technology (more purely energy storage targets), etc.; on the other hand, inverters that are good at current conversion management Device manufacturers, such as Sungrow, GoodWe, Jinlang Technology, etc.
At the same time, the energy storage market will also bring a lot of incremental markets to other sectors. One is a relatively concentrated link in the energy storage industry chain, such as battery raw material companies Longpan Technology, Defang Nano, Fulin Precision, etc., and energy storage system integrators Yongfu Co., Ltd., Kelu Electronics, etc.; the other is the energy storage institute. The widening of the track brought about, such as the conceivable energy storage thermal management companies Sanhua Zhikong, Yinlun and so on. Of course, the incremental market is more difficult to grasp, and whether it needs the support of new technology paths also needs to be constantly verified with the industry chain.
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