Many environmental protection companies cross the border to arrange energy storage

Recently, the textile giant Shenghong Group announced that it would build a capacity of 16GWh energy storage battery with 20 billion RMB. Not long ago, Nanfang Black Sesame increased its investment in Tessonne and planned to build a capacity of 9GWh square lithium iron phosphate energy storage battery; KaiRMB Instruments also announced its participation in the establishment of energy storage companies.

Since this year, many companies have invested in the energy storage industry, and dozens of companies have entered the energy storage field. It is particularly noteworthy that many environmental protection companies have cross-border energy storage fields, and each company has its own specific entry mode, energy storage technology types and energy storage industry links.

Developers and equipment suppliers have priority in energy storage industry

With the establishment of the dual carbon action route, the demand for energy storage projects has gradually become clear, and energy storage project developers and equipment suppliers have become the first participants.

To create new growth opportunities, CNTY started with waste incineration power generation and production and manufacturing of environmental protection equipment. In 2021, CNTY officially entered the energy storage field through cooperation with the global leading gravity energy storage company Energy Vault.

CNTY’s traditional environmental protection business is perfectly adapted to gravity energy storage and other new energy businesses, providing a strong guarantee from capital, project experience, technical equipment and material supply.

In November of the same year, CNTY signed the first 100MWh gravity energy storage project in Rudong County, Jiangsu Province, China. At present, the project is under construction. The future operation of the project indicates that the gravity energy storage has the conditions for large-scale commercial application.

In addition, Yonker is currently mobilizing resources to vigorously expand the investment, construction and operation of clean energy and energy storage projects and the development, trading and management of carbon assets. In the energy storage field, it mainly covers the design, system integration, complete equipment, engineering construction, operation management and other overall solutions of energy storage projects.

In August 2022, Yonker signed a cooperation framework agreement with the Management Committee of Hengyang Songmu Economic Development Zone, Hunan Province, China, with a total investment of about 3 billion RMB, to gradually promote the development of roof photovoltaic+user side energy storage, multi energy complementary construction+smart management platform.

XIZICE was also introduced to energy storage in the early stage. In March this year, XIZICE officially changed its name from the leading company of waste heat boiler and proposed to enter the new energy market by adhering to the development strategy of “new energy+energy storage”.

Previously, XIZICE built China’s first demonstration project of “PV+molten salt energy storage+liquid flow power storage+hydrogen fuel cell”. Later, it signed the first energy storage project with Lvdian Energy, with a total investment of 191.54 million RMB planned to carry out the molten salt Energy storage demonstration project.

A group of environmental protection companies explore the energy storage industry

However, with the large-scale development of energy storage projects and the rapid transformation of market demand, some supply chain problems are gradually exposed. On the one hand, the lack of lithium battery capacity has been the consensus of the industry, and the rapid growth of demand for lithium batteries has driven the soaring growth of upstream raw materials.

It is precisely by observing this phenomenon that a group of environmental protection companies, such as Weiming Environment, Tongxing Environmental Protection, Longking, etc., have started in-depth exploration in the field of energy storage batteries, battery recycling and even raw materials.

On September 17, Tongxing Environmental Protection announced that it would cooperate with the University of Science and Technology of China to establish a joint laboratory for energy storage battery materials and devices. It planned to invest 50 million RMB in the research and development of energy storage battery materials such as lithium ion batteries and sodium ion batteries within five years, aiming to increase the cycle life of sodium ion batteries to 10000 times.

On October 9, Longking announced that it planned to invest a total of about 2 billion RMB to build 5GWh lithium iron phosphate energy storage battery capacity in Shanghang County, Fujian Province, China, for industrial and commercial energy storage, high power energy storage, low temperature energy storage and other scenarios. This is also Longking’s first cross-border involvement in the field of energy storage batteries.

The same layout of lithium battery materials is Weiming Environment. As an environmental protection company with independent intellectual property rights in waste incineration technology in China, Weiming Environment teamed up with three famous companies in the field of batteries and materials in August this year to invest a total of 19.1 billion RMB with CHENGTUN MINING, Tsingshan and Sunwoda, with an annual output of 200000 tons of high nickel ternary cathode materials.

In addition, some environmental protection companies enter the energy storage industry chain through the recycling of retired batteries. On October 31, Bossco announced that PT YONG QING INDUSTRY (INDONESIA) signed a contract to arrange battery recycling and recycling.

On October 31, Bossco announced that it had signed a contract with PT.YONG QING INDUSTRY(INDONESIA) to arrange battery recycling and recycling

Since August this year, Bossco has successively reached cooperation with DFLZ, Guangxi Auto, etc., to carry out the recycling business of retired power batteries, and also signed a contract with Guangzhou Development, China, to establish cooperation in wind power, photovoltaic and other new energy projects.

Different companies enter energy storage with different considerations

From the above cooperation layout, different companies have different considerations when choosing to enter the energy storage technologies direction.

In recent years, lithium iron phosphate battery has occupied an absolute advantage in the energy storage market due to its long life, high energy density, high efficiency, fast response speed and other advantages. The shortage of battery capacity and raw materials has benefited many companies.

According to the recent third quarter report, the net profit of listed companies engaged in lithium battery cathode material business has grown considerably. In this context, Longking and Weiming Environment choose lithium batteries and lithium battery cathode materials to enter the energy storage track to cope with the shortage of lithium battery materials.

In order to fundamentally get rid of the capacity and price constraints of lithium raw materials, the technical route of sodium ion battery energy storage has become a new battlefield for battery leading companies. Tongxing Environmental Protection has also timely joined in the research and development of sodium ion battery products and materials.

However, the popularity of lithium batteries may also be just a prelude to the initial outbreak of the energy storage market. How can we continue to occupy the energy storage market? Companies have their own views.

The gravity energy storage of the CNTY layout is different from all the existing energy storage technologies. It is understood that there are three technical directions of gravity energy storage: suspended, inclined and new pumped storage. CNTY has selected the most mature and promising suspended energy storage technology based on modular architecture.

Gravity energy storage technology has high feasibility, conversion efficiency of about 85%, cost between pumped storage and electrochemical energy storage, and installation speed of less than one year, which can meet the needs of wind and rain construction. At the same time, it has the advantages of safety, expandability, long term energy storage, flexible site selection, etc., and has great application value.

As a compromise energy storage scheme between pumped storage and electrochemical energy storage, gravity energy storage technology will have practical value in the gap between the two, and is expected to fill the gap of low-cost fast installed energy storage technology.

With its strong upstream waste incineration and solid waste treatment capacity, CNTY’s solid waste and recycling business can provide low-carbon and recyclable material sources for gravity energy storage projects.

The recycled waste and solid waste can be used to make gravity energy storage blocks, which can not only give full play to the advantages of industrial chain coordination, but also reduce operating costs, further meeting the cost reduction needs of the energy storage industry.

However, while companies are keen on large-scale energy storage applications, some companies are more inclined to participate in the user side energy storage market. The core difficulty of user side energy storage is to customize energy storage schemes for energy consuming companies and effectively reduce their energy consumption.

In the past, Yonker has accumulated a large number of industrial company customers and formed a good cooperative relationship in the integrated environmental services, which will provide a good application scenario for the development of energy storage business.

Yonker signed a cooperation framework agreement with the Management Committee of Hengyang Songmu Economic Development Zone, which will gradually promote roof photovoltaic development+user side energy storage construction, multi energy complementary construction+smart management platform construction.

At present, the first phase of the plan has been gradually implemented. According to the energy management contract agreement signed in October 2022, the project will cooperate to develop 2.5MW/12MWh energy storage power station in the EMC mode to provide services such as power management at the user side, effectively suppressing load fluctuation, achieving peak load reduction and valley filling, and power capacity compensation.

At the early stage of the industry development, the abundance of energy storage technology products provided customers with more choices. From the perspective of energy storage practitioners, it still requires time and market verification if they want to grow in competition and stand firm in the market.