Encountering The Development Pain Of Trillion Energy Storage Industry

? ? ? ? When the development of energy storage industry is in full swing, a strange phenomenon has become the heart knot of the industry. In recent years, the energy storage industry has been booming year by year, but when it will be the "first year" has yet to be determined. Industry insiders believe that China's energy storage industry has reached the "eve of the outbreak". With the normalization of short-term policies, the arrival of the first year of the industry is just one step away.

In fact, the domestic energy storage industry has been performing the song of "ice and fire" in recent years: on the one hand, the huge market development potential has spawned the influx of people from all walks of life into this trillion track; However, on the other hand, the vague business model and safety standards have hindered the rapid development of the industry.

Therefore, "looking at the policy in the short term and looking at the cost in the long term" has become the general mentality of the domestic energy storage industry. Behind this mentality, the whole energy storage industry attaches importance to economy and security.

"This year, the development trend of energy storage industry is clear and worth looking forward to." Luo Qi, sales director of the energy storage division of Shangneng electric, said in an interview with the 21st century economic report that when the product safety standards and an operational market-oriented trading rules will be issued, they will become the key factors restricting the development of energy storage industry.

At present, there are many competitors in the energy storage industry, but there is no big head leading enterprise. IC photo

Safety war

The 11th China International Energy Storage conference is being held in Hangzhou. The 21st century economic reporter noted that, different from the previous sessions, the theme of this conference specially emphasized "sticking to the bottom line of energy storage safety".

China has become the largest renewable energy producer and consumer in the world. Due to the randomness, volatility, large installed capacity and small power consumption of renewable energy such as wind and light, the power grid's capacity to absorb renewable energy has gradually approached the ceiling. Energy storage is the key auxiliary technology to solve the problem of energy consumption.

It is undeniable that the energy storage market has great potential. Founder Securities forecasts that by 2025, the accumulated energy storage scale of global generation side, grid side and user side will exceed 205gwh. In addition, according to the "guidance on accelerating the development of new energy storage" (Draft) issued by the national development and Reform Commission and the State Energy Administration in April this year, it is proposed that the installed capacity of new energy storage will reach more than 30GW by 2025. By the end of 2020, the total installed capacity of domestic new energy storage units is only 3.8gw. This means that the energy storage industry will have a compound annual growth rate of more than 50% in the next five years to achieve the above goals.

However, just as the development momentum of energy storage is very hot, a series of safety accidents are ringing the alarm bell for the industry.

At present, energy storage technology can be roughly divided into pumped storage, electrochemical energy storage and hydrogen storage. The 21st century economic reporter has noticed that pumped storage is the most widely used form of energy storage in China. This technology is greatly affected by the geographical environment, and due to the low efficiency of pumped storage, in the case of other energy storage technologies gradually mature, the growth rate of its new installed capacity slows down year by year.

Electrochemical energy storage benefits from the rapid development of new energy vehicles and the rapid decline of lithium battery cost, which is expected to become the mainstream energy storage technology path in the future, and the development of this technology is subject to safety and cost.

In April this year, a fire accident occurred in an energy storage power station under the Fuwei optical storage company of GuoXuan in Beijing. During the rescue process, there was a sudden explosion, causing many casualties. The accident directly pushed the safety of energy storage to the front of the stage. An industry source told the 21st century economic reporter that the relevant departments had already started to formulate relevant industrial policies for the marketization and large-scale development of the energy storage industry, but after the safety accident, the policy introduction cycle was lengthened.

At home and abroad, the safety accidents of electrochemical energy storage power station are not rare. From 2017 to 2019, 23 major fires occurred in more than 1000 electrochemical energy storage power stations in South Korea, and the annual fire probability of each power station was about 1.5%. In March 2020, the United States, Arizona energy storage power station failure smoke, firefighters into the inspection after the explosion, causing many injuries.

"The first pain point of energy storage industry is safety. Without safety, all economy is worthless." Liu weizeng, chairman of Xi'an singularity Energy Technology Co., Ltd., told the 21st century economic report that the probability of ignition of electrochemical energy storage products is inevitable, but there is no effective way to extinguish fire in the energy storage industry at present, and many energy storage safety accidents have increased people's concerns about the safety of energy storage.

However, the occurrence of safety accidents has also given the energy storage industry the opportunity to start again, and let the industry pay more attention to the improvement and formulation of industrial safety standards.

Sun Jinhua, Professor of the University of science and technology of China, suggested at this year's international energy storage conference that relevant departments should formulate scientific and reasonable fire safety design specifications for electrochemical energy storage power stations, and develop multi-level security technology for fire safety of electrochemical energy storage power stations.

In sun Jinhua's opinion, multi-level security technology should be divided into three parts: ontology safety, process safety and fire safety. Body safety is to develop safe lithium-ion batteries to improve the safety of cathode materials at high temperature; Process safety is to do a good job in lithium-ion battery fire prediction and early warning technology and equipment development; Fire safety is the development of lithium-ion batteries and modules of high-efficiency fire-fighting and anti reburning technology.

Economic difficulties

At present, there are many competitors in the energy storage industry, but most of them are small and medium-sized enterprises with weak strength. The "white paper on energy storage industry research" issued by Zhongguancun energy storage industry technology alliance in April pointed out that at present, most operators of energy storage industry have not yet found a market mechanism and business model suitable for their own development, power market institutions are lagging behind, technology manufacturers rely on advances, and integrators take risks.

It is worth mentioning that the vast majority of the new wind power and photovoltaic power generation side projects are strong energy distribution and storage, lack of mode and price transmission mechanism, and are prone to low price disordered competition. In May 2020, the EPC project of Three Gorges new energy Qinghai Xitieshan liushaping phase II wind farm energy storage project was opened. Although the EPC price of 1.699 yuan / wh set the lowest record at that time, the price was far lower than the industry recognized cost price.

The phenomenon of low price competition highlights the dilemma of business model in the development of domestic energy storage industry“ Investors in energy storage costs are often not the beneficiaries of energy storage benefits. " Hou Chaoyong, chief technical engineer of new energy business department of Kehua Data Co., Ltd., believes that the benefits of energy storage system can be reflected in multiple links, but the investment cost is often borne by a single link.

The reporter of 21st century economic report has noticed that most orders of domestic energy storage projects are driven by policy, and the mechanism of energy storage system participating in electricity price transaction has not been straightened out“ We believe that the biggest restriction of energy storage industry is economic problem. Although the policy drives wind and solar energy storage to increase the scale, there is still a lack of mature cost transmission mechanism. In the absence of business model, strong energy distribution and storage for the purpose of grid connection is easy to be converted into price war, which is not conducive to the healthy development of the industry. " Zhejiang securities analysis said.

However, in Hou Chaoyong's view, with the continuous progress of electricity marketization, the transmission of energy storage cost in all aspects of the power system will be more smooth, and the energy storage investment will change from "external factors driven" to its own economic driven.

Two years ago, the national development and Reform Commission issued the supervision and Approval Measures for pricing and cost of power transmission and distribution, which made it clear that power storage facilities should not be included in the transmission and distribution price, which affected the enthusiasm of power grid enterprises to invest in energy storage to a certain extent, and led to the cooling of the growth rate of energy storage market in 2019.

But positive signals are coming out. On May 25, the national development and Reform Commission officially announced the notice on the action plan for deepening the reform of the price mechanism during the 14th Five Year Plan period (hereinafter referred to as the action plan)《 According to the action plan, we will continue to push forward the reform of transmission and distribution tariff, rationalize the structure of transmission and distribution price, and enhance the flexibility of electricity price mechanism. At the same time, the plan once again made it clear that the newly issued price mechanism of pumped storage should be implemented, and a new energy storage price mechanism should be established to promote the development of new energy and related energy storage industry.

So, how far is the domestic energy storage industry from economy? According to Hou Chaoyong, "photovoltaic lcoe (levelized kilowatt hour cost) + energy storage cost" has become economic in areas where the price of electricity is greater than 0.62 yuan / kWh; When the energy storage price is reduced to 1.4 yuan / wh, the region with the average price difference of "peak valley + peak average" of 0.6 yuan / kWh can achieve an internal rate of return of more than 8%, which is economical.

"We expect the cost of energy storage batteries to drop below 0.6 yuan next year, and the cost of system integration can be less than 1 yuan." Liu weizeng told the 21st century economic reporter that the domestic energy storage market will usher in an explosive growth next year.

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