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At present, the lithium battery materials industry has entered a new round of excess production. In this context, China has put another lithium iron phosphate project into production. Why did you choose to start production at this time?
Surplus will always eliminate backward production capacity, and high-quality products will always be scarce. While there are some voices of overcapacity in the industry, there are also voices who believe that the energy storage industry may become a new battleground for industry competition.
1. Development status of lithium battery material industry
With the continuous increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, the lithium battery material industry continues to be hot. The top 10 lithium battery companies in the world have announced new capacity construction projects for lithium carbonate, lithium iron phosphate and other related materials.
With a number of projects put into production in the past two years, some voices have emerged in the industry suggesting that the lithium battery material industry has entered a surplus cycle. It is predicted that by 2023, with the release of production capacity of major companies, the overall supply of lithium iron phosphate in China will reach 2.371 million tons.
However, the demand is only 1.846 million tons, and there will be a surplus of 525,000 tons. The breakthrough achieved by the physical dry lithium iron phosphate cathode material process includes the lowest full cycle cost.
And the overall investment, energy consumption index and process cost are reduced by nearly 50%. Indicators such as compaction, energy density, and number of cycles have greatly improved performance.
2. What are the development bottlenecks of the new market
Although there are some voices of overcapacity in the industry, there are also some voices who believe that the energy storage industry may become a new battleground for industry competition. The future growth of energy storage is greater than that of power batteries, and because customers are very dispersed, they will not be monopolized.
Energy storage has provided a new direction for the application of lithium batteries and lithium battery materials, which has greatly increased the overall capacity of the market. The demand for energy storage in grid operations is now enormous.
There is an urgent need to find out how to stabilize the instability of wind and light (power generation) and solve the problems of peak shaving, frequency regulation and voltage regulation. With the rapid development of renewable energy generation industries such as wind energy and photovoltaics, the problem of wind and light abandonment caused by grid interference, pollution and randomness is becoming more serious.
And energy storage is an important means to solve the problem of wind and light abandonment. Encourage the construction of new energy storage facilities on commercial and home energy storage, encourage the construction of new energy storage facilities at key nodes of large power grids where peak shaving and frequency regulation are difficult or have insufficient voltage support capacity and improve the safe and stable operation level of the power grid.
The current development of the energy storage industry still faces many problems, and cost is one of them. Battery energy storage is divided into centralized battery energy storage and distributed battery energy storage. The key issues facing centralized battery storage are safety and cost.
Currently, the cost of generating electricity is very low, but the cost of energy storage is much higher than the cost of generating electricity. At present, the charging and discharging cycle life of energy storage lithium batteries is difficult to support the overall strategy of wind, solar and storage integration. The cost of energy storage will also fall sharply as the cost of single energy storage decreases linearly as the life increases.
Energy storage has become one of the hottest new energy trucks, and unicorns are being born here in batches. With the increase of the proportion of renewable energy, coal power has gradually withdrawn, and technical routes such as electrochemical energy storage, mechanical energy storage, electromagnetic energy storage, hydrogen energy storage and thermal energy storage have gradually developed. The energy storage industry has also ushered in huge opportunities for development.
3. When energy storage meets intelligence
The green economy and energy revolution have swept the world, from the demonstration application stage of electrochemical energy storage to the present, and the track it is on is becoming more and more crowded.
While the industry is rising, the problem is also not to be underestimated. The development of the energy storage industry faces a series of challenges such as safety and technology maturity to be further improved, unstable and clear revenue models, and high costs.
In the energy storage industry, safety has always been an important factor restricting the rapid development of the industry, and the biggest hidden danger of safety comes from energy storage batteries.
At present, China's new energy storage projects are still in the early stages of commercialization, and energy storage will be transformed from the initial stage of commercialization to large-scale development in 2025. The full market-oriented development of energy storage will not be realized until 2030.
4. The emergence of semi-solid lithium-ion batteries
To solve this problem, many companies have developed energy storage system products based on semi-solid lithium-ion batteries. Semi-solid batteries not only have higher energy density, but also achieve intrinsic safety due to a reduced risk of liquid electrolyte leakage and flammability.
For semi-solid batteries, whether it is overcharging, short circuiting, needle punching, etc., its safety limit is much higher than that of lifepo4 battery. The significance of energy storage for the development of new energy is to provide stable energy supply, improve the utilization rate of renewable energy, promote energy transformation and support the construction of new energy systems, which is regarded as an important infrastructure for the large-scale development of new energy.
As an important part of the construction of a new power system, new energy storage will play an indispensable role. In the new energy storage industry, it is necessary to continuously enhance the core technical capabilities of the products themselves. Accurately evaluate battery efficiency. Based on this, the energy storage system can withstand the long-term test of the market.
5. Conclusion
The demand for energy storage in grid operations is now enormous. However, at present, China's energy storage industry still faces problems such as high cost and short life. At present, compared with the 25-year operating cycle of photovoltaic projects, the charging and discharging cycle life of lithium energy storage batteries is difficult to support the overall strategy of wind, solar and storage integration.
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