2024-01-20Since the beginning of this year, Beijing has explicitly supported the pilot demonstration of new energy storage in non-densely populated areas such as industrial plants, logistics parks and data centers outside the Fifth Ring Road. Jiangsu proposed a plan to 2027 the province's new energy storage project scale of about 5 million kilowatts; Shandong Province, which ranks first in the country in the scale of new energy storage, has also proposed that 12 new energy storage projects will be added this year.
As an important support for the construction of a new power system, new energy storage has become a "sweet cake" for the development of the industry. The National Energy Administration previously disclosed at the third-quarter press conference that in the first half of this year, the installed capacity of new energy storage in the country was about 8.63 million kilowatts / 17.72 million kilowatt-hours, equivalent to the total installed capacity of previous years.
The State Grid Energy Research Institute recently released the "New energy storage Development Analysis Report 2023" (hereinafter referred to as the "report") pointed out that China's new energy storage ranks first in the world's installed capacity, has been in the rapid development channel, tens of millions of kilowatts of new steps. For some time in the future, new energy storage will continue to maintain large-scale growth, and under the accelerated competition pattern, the advanced nature, practicality, and even economy of its scene will become more prominent.
Some new types of energy storage may be better than pumped storage
New energy storage generally refers to the electric energy storage technology in addition to pumped storage, which is one of the system adjustment means for many challenges in the new power system. At present, when China's energy consumption structure problems are prominent and fossil fuels are highly dependent on foreign countries, new energy storage is an important guarantee for national energy security and an important technical support for achieving the goal of "dual carbon".
As of the end of June this year, the country's new energy storage installed capacity has reached 17.33 million kilowatts / 35.8 million KWH. "Report" shows that as of the end of September this year, the State Grid Co., Ltd. operating area of new energy storage installed capacity of nearly 20 million kilowatts, the average charge and discharge time of 2.1 hours, the installed scale of the top five regions are Shandong, Hunan, Xinjiang, Gansu and Ningxia.
The large-scale development of new energy storage has accelerated the development of its industrial chain. At present, the rapidly developing new energy storage technologies mainly include new lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries, and new compressed air energy storage. Among them, lithium-ion batteries have the advantages of fast response speed and flexible layout, and the technology is relatively mature, and is currently the mainstream technology in China, but its safety problems have not been fundamentally solved.
According to Hu Jing, director of the New Energy Institute of the State Grid Energy Research Institute, in recent years, the life of lithium-ion battery energy storage charging and discharging cycle has improved rapidly, and the system construction cost has decreased significantly, but compared with pumped storage, the life cycle electricity cost is still 2 to 3 times higher.
Compared with lithium-ion batteries, all-vanadium flow batteries do not have thermal runaway, overheating, combustion and explosion, which is safer and has a long cycle life, but the system construction cost is about 3 times that of lithium-ion batteries. The first 100MW all-vanadium flow battery energy storage power station approved by the National Energy Administration - Dalian 100MW / 400MWh flow battery energy storage peak-load power station phase I project has been connected to the grid at the end of October 2022, with a maximum storage capacity of 400,000 KWH. However, the all-vanadium flow battery has the problem of low energy density and low conversion efficiency, and is still in the pilot demonstration stage of 100 megawatts.
The new compressed air energy storage can provide the system with the moment of inertia support, has the advantages of large capacity, long continuous charge and discharge time, relatively flexible location, etc. Its key equipment has been localized, the system construction cost has been reduced, and the construction cost of some systems is equivalent to pumped storage. At present, a number of 100MW pilot demonstration projects such as Shandong Tai 'an 300MW compressed air energy storage innovation demonstration project, Liaoning Chaoyang 300MW compressed air energy storage project, Ningxia Zhongwei 100MW compressed air energy storage project are being implemented.
According to industry analysts, at present, whether it is a vanadium flow battery or a new type of compressed air energy storage, in the case of the same capacity, its storage time may be better than pumped storage.
The new energy storage development model shows a "big and small" trend
In the process of building new energy systems and new power systems, the importance of energy storage as a flexible regulatory resource has been widely recognized. Under the influence of policy guidance, industrial expansion, cost reduction, market activity and other factors, new energy storage has shown and will maintain a rapid development trend.
"In the medium and long term, the extensive large-scale development of new energy storage will gradually change to the precise scenario configuration, and achieve full commercialization through the power market, and the development model shows a 'big and small' trend of power station capacity increase and small-capacity energy storage aggregation utilization." Hu Jing predicted.
The "Technical Guidelines for New Energy Storage Planning for cross-province transmission configuration of New Energy Bases" issued by the National Energy Administration in February this year proposed that the capacity of new energy storage for transmission configuration of new energy bases should be demand-oriented, fully consider the constraints of channel transmission curve and transmission price competitiveness, and optimize the configuration scheme through multi-scheme comparison.
Considering the construction conditions of new energy storage in various provinces and regions and the current planning scale, the report predicts that at the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the installed capacity of new energy storage in China will exceed 60 million kilowatts, doubling on the basis of 30 million kilowatts planned by the state.
Hu Jing said that in the future, energy storage technology will show a diversified development trend, and large-capacity and long-period energy storage technology is expected to make breakthroughs, providing more technical options to support the construction of new power systems.
With the gradual localization of new energy storage key technologies and equipment, the cost of system construction will also gradually decrease. Hu Jing said that by 2025, the cost reduction space of lithium-ion battery technology will be about 20% to 30%, the cost of vanadium flow battery technology will be reduced by 30% to 40%, and the cost reduction space of compressed air energy storage technology will be about 30%.
"It is expected that in 2025, long-term energy storage technologies such as compressed air and flow batteries will enter the initial stage of commercial development, and energy storage technologies such as flywheels and sodium-ion batteries will enter the large-capacity pilot demonstration stage; By 2030, all kinds of mainstream new energy storage technology and equipment will be independent and controllable, and achieve comprehensive market-oriented development." Hu Jing said.
