Huge demand for electrochemical energy storage of lithium iron phosphate batteries and iron tower base stations

There is a huge demand for electrochemical energy storage of lithium iron phosphate batteries and iron tower base stations. Excess production capacity, declining subsidies, and promoting cost reduction. Electrochemical energy storage and iron tower base stations have brought huge demand for lithium iron phosphate batteries. The sales revenue of lithium iron phosphate batteries for energy storage increased by 20% year-on-year to 6.5 billion yuan from 5.2 billion yuan, and the output increased from 3.9 billion watt hours to 5.2 billion watt hours, with a year-on-year increase of 35%.

Huge market demand for electrochemical energy storage of lithium batteries

The spring of electrochemical energy storage is gradually coming. By the end of 2018, China's electrochemical energy storage has been put into operation with a cumulative scale of 1.073 GW, officially entering the GW level; This data will be updated to 1.92 GW by the end of 2019. It is expected that the scale of electrochemical energy storage will exceed 10 GW by 2022 and approach 20 GW by 2023. In the long run, the energy storage field will be one of the important application markets for lithium batteries.

It is understood that the energy storage market has a broad prospect, but the technical requirements are also high, especially for the safety of lithium iron phosphate batteries. Energy storage is a systematic project, and it is not as if the battery core is completed, everything will be fine. Even if a connection line fails, it may affect the entire system. The industry is increasingly concerned about battery safety issues. In order to further ensure safety, the company has made great efforts in management and control, especially in the thermal management of lithium batteries, which can achieve early warning and monitoring of the operating environment, to achieve multiple security measures from the entire system level to the cell level.

It is worth noting that in the distribution of electrochemical energy storage technology, lithium batteries have reached 99% of the market share, far higher than lead acid batteries and liquid flow batteries, with lithium iron phosphate batteries accounting for the vast majority of the market share. At the same time, mainstream energy storage systems generally require a 10-year warranty, which requires extremely high cycling performance of batteries. In this regard, lithium iron phosphate batteries are far better than lead-acid batteries. Taking into account, it is not difficult to understand that lithium batteries have become the mainstream.

On December 25, 2018, the domestic power generation side electrochemical energy storage project, the 50MW/100MWh lithium iron phosphate battery energy storage project of the Haixi Prefecture multi-energy complementary integration and optimization demonstration project, was successfully connected to the grid for power generation. The project is of great significance to the development of new energy and the promotion of renewable energy storage!

In many application fields of energy storage technology, energy storage, as a key technical support, is deeply integrated with renewable energy, solving the problems of stable output of renewable energy and improving system power generation efficiency from the operational level, thereby promoting grid connection and local consumption of renewable energy, improving the consumption level of renewable energy such as wind and light, supporting distributed power and microgrid, and providing peak shaving, frequency modulation, standby, black start Demand response support and other services undoubtedly have great application value and bright market prospects. Smooth output, power quality, peak shaving and frequency modulation will all become useful areas for lithium battery energy storage.

Large demand for lithium iron phosphate battery energy storage in iron tower base stations

There is a huge demand for lithium iron phosphate batteries for energy storage in China's iron towers, and cascade utilization is already in the expanded pilot stage. As the scale of the electric vehicle market continues to grow, China's power lithium batteries will usher in a "scrap boom", with the scrap volume exceeding 248000 tons by 2020, approximately 20 times the scrap volume in 2016. As society pays more and more attention to environmental pollution, carbon emissions, and other issues, it has become an inevitable trend to cascade the use of retired power batteries.

Iron Tower currently has 1.8 million base stations nationwide.

The total demand for energy storage lithium batteries is approximately 146GWh, including:

(1) Battery backup requires approximately 54 GWh.

(2) 600000 peak shaving and valley filling stations require approximately 44GWh of batteries.

(3) 500000 new energy stations require about 48GWh of batteries.

A total of about 25GWh of batteries are required annually for the replacement and construction of storage stations, including:

Based on the 6-year replacement cycle of the storage station battery, about 22.6 GWh of lithium iron phosphate batteries are required each year; Based on the calculation of 100000 new base stations per year, it is estimated that the new power stations will require about 2.4GWh of batteries.

The lithium battery for energy storage in an iron tower communication base station usually adopts a hot backup method, which can automatically switch to the battery for power supply after a power outage outside the base station. Generally, the base station can be maintained for 1-2 hours of continuous operation. China's iron towers have a huge demand for lithium batteries for energy storage, with lithium batteries accounting for around 2%; Lithium battery recycling and cascade utilization has been in the expanded pilot stage. Iron Tower Company has established 150 recycling service outlets in 17 provinces and cities, and has developed multiple application modes such as comprehensive backup power supply solutions, breaking through a number of key common technologies such as residual value evaluation and rapid detection, and improving the optimization of technical standards and specifications.

Summary: China's 5G base stations will drive the demand for lithium batteries above 155GWh. It is expected that commercial applications will be launched on a large scale in the commercial field by 2020. Specifically, the application of lithium batteries in the market fields of power grid energy storage, communication base station energy storage, and thermal power frequency modulation energy storage is gaining momentum. Currently, domestic lithium batteries used for energy storage are mainly lithium iron phosphate batteries. The explosion of domestic power grid energy storage demand will directly drive the demand for lithium iron phosphate batteries.