The 2020s will be the era of energy storage

Influenced by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the European energy price continued to rise this year, which led to the rapid rise of residential electricity prices, thus stimulating the surge of household energy storage demand, and superimposed on the rapid growth of the American market, making the global energy storage market highly visible.

It is predicted that by the end of 2030, the scale of energy storage installed capacity deployed in the world will increase dramatically. At the same time, the 1920s will be the “energy storage era”.

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Wind and solar energy will play an important role

The process of realizing “carbon neutrality” in countries around the world is the transition process in which clean energy gradually replaces traditional fossil energy. Among them, hydropower, wind energy and solar energy are the most promising.

However, there is a bottleneck constraint on the total amount of water resources. Therefore, wind energy and solar energy will play the most important role in diluting traditional thermal power and creating green power in the future.

Besides, light energy and wind energy are unstable output power sources, and light energy is also vulnerable to weather. The weather is cloudy and sunny, which has a significant impact on the actual active power release of light energy.

It is the volatility, intermittency and randomness of wind and light energy that lead to the instability of power output on the generation side, and also make it difficult to achieve distribution balance on the grid side. At the same time, the demand on the user side can not be accurately and timely responded to and met. The volatility of the entire power system is obvious.

Energy storage can eliminate the worries behind the transformation of energy

Energy storage can completely eliminate the worries of converting clean energy into green electricity. On the one hand, the surplus energy will be collected and stored when the wind and solar energy are sufficient or when the electricity is low.

The stored energy will be released when the power energy enters the low tide or when the electricity is peak, so that the clean energy of each unit can be fully utilized and developed, and the effect of absorbing wind and light energy can be maximized;

On the other hand, storing wind energy and light energy can greatly reduce and shield the accidental interference of subsequent weather factors, thus enhancing the continuity and stability of power transmission on the generation side.

At the same time, with the help of energy storage, the power grid side (company) can purchase power at a low price when the power supply side is booming, and sell power at a high price when the demand on the power consumption side is booming, which greatly improves the flexibility of the power grid system while cutting peak and filling valley.

In addition, whether on the generation side or the grid side or the user side, the electricity generated from the use of energy storage can be transferred and profited from through the electricity trading market when the power is scarce and the price is high, which can undoubtedly significantly enhance the enthusiasm of energy storage entities and guide the development and use of energy storage resources into a benign track.

Energy storage can be regarded as the ballast of energy transformation

The stronger the substitution of clean energy for fossil energy, the more difficult it is to balance power supply and demand. However, the use of energy storage can lead to the substitution risk of clean energy in the whole process, and even energy storage can be regarded as the ballast of energy transformation.

Globally, energy storage is mainly divided into traditional energy storage and new energy storage. The former mainly refers to pumped energy storage, while the latter includes electrochemical energy storage and compressed air energy storage. Pumped energy storage is the use of mechanical pumping equipment to pump water from the low to the high, when needed, for hydropower;

Electrochemical energy storage

From the perspective of global installed capacity and market share, at present, the cumulative installed capacity of pumped energy storage is the largest, the cumulative installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage ranks second, and the landing layout of compressed air energy storage projects ranks third.

Electrochemical energy storage is basically free from interference from external conditions, with fast response speed and flexible construction projects. More importantly, as the most widely distributed electrochemical energy storage variety at present, lithium battery energy storage technology is not only mature, but also the marginal trend of cost reduction is becoming increasingly significant, which has driven the reduction of the entire lithium battery energy storage cost.

At present, the market share of lithium ion batteries exceeds 90%, but sodium batteries may exceed more in the future. The data shows that sodium accounts for 2.75% of the earth’s crust and is distributed all over the world, while lithium is only 0.0065%, mainly distributed in the Americas.

In terms of price, the price of sodium is only 0.29 USD/kg, while the price of lithium is about 21.5 USD/kg. The raw material cost of sodium battery is 30% – 40% lower than that of lithium battery.

Compressed air energy storage

Compared with electrochemical energy storage, although the scale of compressed air energy storage is much lower, Germany and the United States have already started commercial development and application. At first, they mainly used low-lying low-quality electricity to compress and store air in large gas storage caverns.

At the peak of power consumption, high pressure air is released from the gas storage cavern, which drives expanders to generate electricity after fuel combustion. However, traditional compressed air energy storage relies on fossil fuels The weakness of natural gas storage cave restricts the expansion space.

For relevant bottleneck factors, countries around the world actively develop new compressed air energy storage technology. At present, the new type of compressed air energy storage is basically equivalent to pumped energy storage in terms of function, cost, life and performance.

At the same time, it also shows the advantages of large scale, long life, pollution-free, long aging and flexibility. It is an energy storage technology with great development potential.

The energy storage technology industry chain is complete

Whether pumped energy storage, electrochemical energy storage or compressed air energy storage, they all form a closely related and complete industrial chain. There are raw materials and production equipment upstream.

There is an energy storage project construction and integration system composed of battery pack, battery management system, energy management system and energy storage converter in the middle stream, and energy storage product installation and end users in the downstream.

For major economies in the world, it is not only necessary to compete for the high-end voice of the industrial chain, but also to seize the trade appreciation of the industrial chain. Therefore, the new energy storage that seems to be based on the common vision of “carbon neutrality” of mankind is inevitably marked with competitive symbols.

Global energy storage has entered a large-scale fast track

Throughout the world, some major energy storage promotion and application countries generally support the development of energy storage market by providing subsidies, investment tax relief and other measures in terms of policy mechanisms.

● The United States
In the United States, the ITC policy launched by the federal government supports energy storage systems higher than 5 kilowatt hours to obtain up to 30% of the ITC tax rebate. At the same time, SGIP’s subsidies for user side distributed energy storage will be extended to 2026. BEST will provide $1 billion in financial support for innovation in energy storage technologies research, development and demonstration in the next five years.

● Germany
In Germany, not only has the EEG subsidy limit for PV installed capacity to reach 52GW been cancelled, but also the EEG tax paid by electricity consumers for clean energy incentives has been reduced by 0.25 euro per kilowatt hour since 2021, and will be reduced by 0.0625 euro by 2023.

● Japan
In Japan, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry specially allocated a budget of about 98.3 million dollars this year to provide 66% of the cost subsidies for families and businesses that install lithium-ion batteries;

● UK
In the UK, in addition to the elimination of the upper limit of the 49 MW energy storage license, the “Industrial Strategic Challenge Fund” and the “Net Zero Innovation Portfolio Fund” with a total of 1.246 billion pounds were set up to provide special assistance and support for energy storage technology.

Driven by the gathering and prying of various competitive forces, global energy storage has entered a large-scale fast track. It is predicted that the total installed capacity of the energy storage system deployed globally will exceed 12GW in 2022.