Energy storage: the ballast of global energy transformation |
Release time:2022-12-09 16:41:31| Viewed: |
Energy storage: the ballast of global energy transformation
China Energy Storage News: The process of achieving "carbon neutrality" in the world is the transition process of gradually replacing traditional fossil energy with clean energy, among which water, wind and solar energy are the most promising.
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. 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 overseas energy storage market highly visible. On this basis, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has made the latest forecast that by the end of 2030, the scale of energy storage installed capacity deployed globally will surge. At the same time, BNEF emphasizes that the 1920s will be the "era of energy storage".
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. However, light energy and wind energy are unstable output power sources. For example, the daily fluctuation range of wind energy output can reach 80%. The peak output occurs around the early morning and reaches the lowest point in the afternoon. The "reverse load" characteristic is very obvious. The daily fluctuation range of light energy reaches 100%. At noon, it reaches the peak of the day. Around noon, it drops evenly. At night, the output is 0. The peak valley characteristics are distinct. In addition, light energy is also vulnerable to weather, and the weather is cloudy or 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.
However, 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, and 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 (enterprise) 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, no matter on the generation side, 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. Comprehensive evaluation shows that the stronger the substitution of clean energy for fossil energy, the more difficult the balance between power supply and demand is. However, the use of energy storage can clear 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; While electrochemical energy storage is to store and discharge electricity with the help of the positive and negative poles of high-power and high-performance batteries, compressed air energy storage mainly uses the residual electricity during the low load of the grid to compress air, store it in the high-voltage sealing facilities, and release it to drive the gas turbine to generate electricity during the peak power consumption. 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.
Although pumped energy storage is the most important energy storage mode at present, and both technology accumulation and business model are relatively mature, pumped energy storage is strictly limited by geographical potential space, which is not only slow to start, long construction period, but also limited in resource endowment and high in cost. In contrast, electrochemical energy storage is basically free from interference from external conditions, with fast response speed and flexible construction projects. What's more, as the most widely distributed electrochemical energy storage variety at present, lithium battery energy storage is not only mature in technology, but also has an increasingly significant marginal trend of cost reduction, thus driving down the cost of lithium battery energy storage. According to BNEF's estimation, the global lithium battery energy storage cost will be about 1.66 dollars/watt hour in 2022, and it is expected to drop to about 1.29 dollars/watt hour in 2025. In this way, it seems inevitable that electrochemical energy storage will eventually replace the dominant position of pumped energy storage. Data shows that by the end of 2021, the cumulative installed capacity of global pumped energy storage has decreased by 4.1% year on year, while the proportion of electrochemical energy storage has increased to 12.2%, with a cumulative installed capacity of 25.4GW, an increase of 67.7% year on year.
As far as electrochemical energy storage is concerned, the current market share of lithium ion batteries exceeds 90%. However, another sodium battery as a carrier for energy storage may come from behind. 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. At the same time, the price of sodium is only 0.29 dollars/kg, while the price of lithium is about 21.5 dollars/kg. The raw material cost of sodium battery is 30% - 40% lower than that of lithium battery. In addition, the sodium ion battery can achieve a discharge retention rate of more than 90% in a low temperature environment of - 20 ℃, release more than 70% of its capacity at a low temperature of - 40 ℃, and can be recycled at a high temperature of 80 ℃. The project landing and scene application are more flexible. Therefore, the sodium battery will replace the lithium battery, which is the trend of the times. The same conclusion is also applicable to new types of batteries such as vanadium batteries with longer life, higher safety and rich resources.
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, all countries in the world actively develop new compressed air energy storage technologies, such as heat storage compressed air energy storage system, isothermal compressed air energy storage system and liquefied air energy storage system. 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.
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 (in charge of battery status), energy management system (in charge of energy dispatching) and energy storage converter (in charge of current conversion) 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, such as the standard control of products and projects, but also to seize the trade value added of the industrial chain, such as the output capacity of products and technical services, as well as the setting of access barriers to protect domestic industries and products. 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.
Scanning 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. In the United States, the investment tax credit (ITC) policy launched by the federal government supports energy storage systems higher than 5 kilowatt hours to obtain up to 30% of the ITC rebate. At the same time, the subsidy for user side distributed energy storage from the Generation Incentive Plan (SGIP) will be extended to 2026. The Better Energy Storage Technology Act (BEST) will provide $1 billion of financial support for innovation in energy storage technology research, development and demonstration in the next five years. In Germany, not only has the subsidy limit of the Renewable Energy Law (EEG) on photovoltaic installed capacity to reach 52GW been cancelled, but also the EEG tax paid by domestic power 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. 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; 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. Data shows that in 2021, the installed capacity of new energy storage projects put into operation worldwide will be 18.3GW, up 9% year on year. By the end of 2021, the cumulative installed capacity of energy storage projects put into operation worldwide will be 209.4GW. According to the prediction of HIS Markit, a research institute, the total installed capacity of the energy storage system deployed globally will exceed 12GW in 2022. It is worth noting that in the global energy storage pattern, the three leading squares of the United States, China and Europe are extremely obvious, covering 80% of the installed capacity of global energy storage, and this trend will be further strengthened in the future.
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