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| 23 times increase in 4 years, China's outdoor energy storage is on fire |
| Release time:2022-12-30 10:14:45| Viewed： |
23 times increase in 4 years, China's outdoor energy storage is on fire
Recently, outdoor energy storage, a branch of new energy energy storage, has exploded in the global market.
According to public data, the market size of portable energy storage has increased 23 times in the past four years. From the distribution of sales, the U.S. and Japan accounted for more than 75% of the market. Chinese companies have become the biggest beneficiaries of this market boom. According to the data, China's portable energy storage products will account for 91.9% of the global output in 2020.
The rapid growth of portable energy storage market, in addition to the increase in demand for outdoor products due to overseas unsealing, is also a factor that can not be ignored. The development of new energy vehicle industry has greatly improved the energy storage efficiency of lithium battery, but the cost has rapidly decreased. The data shows that the average unit cost of lithium battery pack has dropped by nearly 80% in the past decade.
The research institute predicts that the energy storage market will grow at an annual growth rate of 48% in the next five years, and reach 80 billion yuan in 2026. Unicorn, with an annual sales of 10 billion yuan, will be born from China in the near future. 01 What is portable energy storage?
The so-called "portable energy storage" is simply understood as a "large power bank". At present, the main application scenario is outdoor activities and emergency power, which can supply power for digital devices such as smartphones, tablets, drones, lighting lamps, refrigerators, rice cookers and small household appliances, and alleviate power shortages such as power shortage, power failure, emergency rescue, etc.
Solar panels charge portable power stations | Visual China
Compared with common power packs, outdoor portable energy storage products have higher electric capacity and output power. It is understood that portable energy storage products can be divided into two categories according to the charging capacity of a single machine: one is small and portable equipment with a charging capacity of 0.5-1 kwh; The other is the equipment with a charging capacity of 1.5kwh to 2kwh, which can mainly replace the previous market of oil fired generators.
In terms of output power, portable energy storage products can reach 100W to 2200W, and are equipped with USB, AC, DC, Type-C, PD and other interfaces, which can supply power for digital devices such as refrigerators, rice cookers and small household appliances. Since energy storage products usually carry inverters, they can support AC and DC output, and the price is usually between 300 and 3000 dollars. In contrast, the charging bank commonly used by consumers can only support DC output.
In addition to charging in advance, portable energy storage can also be used with solar panels. The output power of a single solar panel is between 60w and 200w, so that when the battery is used up, photovoltaic can be used to charge the energy storage outdoors to form a small solar power generation system to achieve continuous off grid power generation and extend the power supply life.
In terms of the global market, China is the main producer of portable energy storage. Data shows that in 2020, China's portable energy storage products accounted for 91.9% of the global output. Among them, the top five are Huabao Xinneng, EcoFlow Zhenghao, Deran Minghai, Anke Innovation and Goal Zero, whose income accounts for 50%.
After careful sorting, it can be found that the current portable energy storage players are mainly divided into three categories: rechargeable treasure players, 3C digital brands, and lithium battery or new energy enterprises. Among them, the world's representative portable energy storage enterprises mainly include Huabao Xinneng, Goal Zero, EcoFlow Zhenghao, Delan Minghai, Walde, Desai, etc; Digital brands such as Merchandise Victory, Romance, Beisi, Ruiliang, Haoku, Hailuto, Bull and Anke Innovation have also been deployed one after another; Huawei and Xiaomi, domestic consumer electronics giants, have also been officially announced.
Among them, EcoFlow Zhenghao, established in 2017, has become a "unicorn" in the field of portable energy storage in less than five years. Wang Lei, the founder of EcoFlow Zhenghao, once worked in Dajiang and established a battery research and development department in Dajiang, leading the team to break through the bottleneck of UAV endurance.
In terms of financing, EcoFlow Zhenghao has completed four rounds of financing since its establishment. In June 2021, EcoFlow Zhenghao completed round B financing of more than 100 million dollars, led by Sequoia China, and jointly invested by Hillhouse Venture Capital and CICC. After this round of financing, EcoFlow Zhenghao's valuation exceeded US $1 billion.
Asia (Summer) Sporting Goods and Fashion Exhibition EcoFlow Exhibition Area | Visual China EcoFlow Zhenghao is sought after by capital mainly because its core competitiveness is high-tech support and high-end brands.
The biggest pain point of portable energy storage is the charging time and output power. For example, the charging time of ordinary energy storage batteries is too long, often 10 hours, and they cannot supply power to high-power appliances. Relying on a strong technology team and R&D expenditure, EcoFlow Zhenghao's products are based on the C-end market, with fast technology iteration and strong sense of science and technology, covering the demand for high-power electrification and becoming a benchmark in the industry.
It is understood that EcoFlow Zhenghao has launched two outdoor power supply product lines to the market, namely the Rui RIVER series and the De DELTA series, as well as solar panels, modular power packs and other accessories. Its products are all standard X-Stream lightning fast charging technology, which almost subverts the entire outdoor power supply market. It only takes one hour to charge from 0 to 80%, and 1.6 hours to fully charge to 100%, which is the fastest charging speed in the same type of products.
It is worth mentioning that the terms outdoor energy storage or portable energy storage have not been used for a long time, and the early market is also very small. Therefore, in the early development of EcoFlow Zhenghao, crowdfunding is the key to its growth. According to incomplete statistics, EcoFlow Zhenghao has participated in website crowdfunding 4 times. Among them, in the first quarter of 2019, EcoFlow DELTA sold 2.8 million dollars in 48 days in Kickstarter, ranking 85 among global projects and top 5 in Asia; In the fourth quarter of 2020, EcoFlow Zhenghao's sales in Makuake, a well-known Japanese crowdfunding website, exceeded 500 million yen, breaking the top of Makuake's historical sales.
Dr. Wang Lei, the founder of EcoFlow Zhenghao, said that, on the one hand, EcoFlow has a good overseas user base, and on the other hand, there is a high demand in the overseas generator market. To ensure that users can get the products at the first time, they will give a discount to EcoFlow's powdered silk. During the Kickstarter crowdfunding period, DELTA 1600 sells for $699, and DELTA 1800 sells for $799, Really let products enter the family.
02 Why is portable energy storage on fire?
The sudden explosion of portable energy storage is jointly driven by the supply side and the demand side.
From the demand side, the popularity of outdoor activities in developed countries in Europe and the United States is high, and the demand for outdoor energy products has always existed. Looking at the two major markets of Japan and the United States alone, the proportion of the population participating in outdoor activities in the United States is 48%, which is conducive to the rapid penetration of portable energy storage products and has a broad market space; At the same time, Japan has frequent earthquake disasters and a strong sense of disaster prevention. Emergency standby products are popular in Japan all the year round.
The COVID-19 epidemic catalytic products have been released, benefiting both outdoor and emergency scenarios. On the one hand, with the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, the enthusiasm for outdoor sports around the world has risen, and outdoor consumption such as family self driving tours, small picnics, camping, photography, fishing has been upgraded. Outdoor power has become the mainstream of short distance power consumption; On the other hand, uncertain factors such as epidemic situation and power failure pushed up the standby demand for emergency scenarios, and the use of portable energy storage at home increased.
From the supply side, technological changes have greatly improved the convenience and practicality of products. Early outdoor and emergency power supply is mainly provided by small fuel generators or lead-acid batteries, but they all have their own shortcomings. After the fuel generator is placed for a long time, there will be parts problems, and it must be repaired and maintained frequently. The other is that the noise is very loud, the operation is complex, and the volume is large, and the movement is limited; Lead acid battery, that is, the battery of many two wheel electric vehicles. Lead acid batteries also have their own problems, which are short life and poor endurance.
With the upgrading and progress of lithium battery technology, as well as the continuous reduction of cost under large-scale commercial application, these have provided conditions for the explosion of portable energy storage products. It is understood that energy storage batteries can be produced on a large scale, which is inseparable from the significant increase in energy density brought about by the technological breakthrough in lithium batteries. Taking Tesla as an example, the first electric vehicle Roadster launched in 2008 uses only 55Wh/kg of the energy density of the electric core, but the 2021 Model 3 launched in 2020 uses more than 300Wh/kg of the energy density of the electric core.
Charging electric vehicles at home | Visual China
At the same time, with the increase of large-scale commercial application and R&D investment of lithium battery, the average unit cost of lithium battery pack continues to decline. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) data, the average unit cost of lithium battery pack has dropped from 684 dollars/kWh in 2013 to 132 dollars/kWh in 2021, a drop of 80.70%. The decrease in cost also further promoted portable energy storage products, which began to replace the previous supply of small fuel generators, lead-acid batteries, etc.
With the support of demand growth, technological progress and cost reduction, the portable energy storage track has been in use since 2018, and will completely erupt in 2020. Data shows that from 2018 to 2021, the global portable energy storage market will be 470 million yuan, 1.34 billion yuan, 4.26 billion yuan and 11.13 billion yuan.
The enthusiasm of the market soon attracted the attention of the capital, and many star institutions poured into the market for a while. It is understood that Sequoia, Hillhouse, CICC, Dachen and other innovative projects have developed rapidly in addition to EcoFlow Zhenghao. 03 From Tuyere to Red Sea Market?
In the next few years, it is widely expected that portable energy storage will still be in a high-speed growth period. GGII statistics show that the annual scale will reach 11.13 billion yuan in 2021. It is estimated that by 2026, the global market scale of portable energy storage will exceed 80 billion yuan, with a five-year compound growth rate of 48%.
However, from the technical point of view, although portable energy storage has some barriers, it is not too high. It is understood that portable energy storage products are a collection of electric cells, control systems and thermal management modules. Among them, the core technology of portable energy storage mainly involves two aspects: realizing DC power storage and AC power supply with inverter, and ensuring product safety with high heat dissipation requirements.
Outdoor Power | Vision China
On the whole, the composition of portable energy storage is relatively simple and the supply chain is relatively mature. The upstream supply of ternary battery cells, inverters, battery shells, battery modules and other components in the industrial chain is relatively stable, and small enterprises can also enter the industry.
Therefore, in the short term, the main competition of portable energy storage lies in the marketing level. Taking Huabao Xinneng, which had its IPO meeting in April this year, as an example, from 2019 to 2021, the sales expense soared from 84 million yuan to 565 million yuan. It is understood that Huabao Xinneng is making efforts online to YouTube, Facebook and other social platforms, while offline advertising is placed in places with high traffic such as Hollywood, San Francisco and Japan.
Compared with the soaring sales expenses, R&D investment is relatively insufficient. In 2019, the R&D investment of Huabao was only 9 million yuan, and in 2021, the R&D investment was only 65 million yuan, less than 1/8 of the marketing investment.
A similar scene also appeared in the shared charging bank of that year. Put the time back to 2016, when the concept of shared rechargeable treasure began to erupt, and the hot speculation of capital made it quickly become a wind outlet. In 2017, the industry of shared power packs created a financing myth of 300 million yuan in 10 days and 1.2 billion yuan in 40 days. Monsters, phone calls, small power, etc. became the most concerned companies.
That is to say, at the same time, the competition for sharing power packs became fiercer, with price wars rising one after another, and a large number of "escort" enterprises were washed out. Subsequently, the rapid explosion of the air vent of the shared rechargeable treasure soon ended, leaving the players on the card table with only "three electrics and one beast".
With the shared power bank in the front, how to get out of the differentiation of portable energy storage has become an urgent answer for the industry. At present, one of the directions is to extend the product to more application scenarios, such as overseas household energy storage with high demand.
In short, household energy storage refers to large energy storage equipment with more than 3 degrees of charge. Generally speaking, household energy storage evolved from the original household oil fired generator, and now it is gradually dominated by lithium batteries, with solar panels as a supporting system to realize self storage and self use. For example, Tesla's solar roof and the lithium battery integrated household energy storage system Powerwall can be used for off grid home self generation, power storage backup and peak valley price arbitrage.
At present, because the domestic power grid is stable and the unit price of household energy storage is high, the overseas market is the main consumer market. The product is composed of lithium battery energy storage system+household energy storage solution integration. At present, based on existing products, portable energy storage companies are extending to large capacity and high-power home storage, such as EcoFlow Zhenghao, Huabao Xinneng, etc., starting from the U.S. market.
Although the current portable energy storage market still has a lot of incremental space, the participation of many players has made it a "Red Sea stage". Next, there will be a big wave to wash the sand. Enterprises with technical advantages and channel advantages will enjoy the last laugh. |
