Compared with traditional energy, photovoltaic and other renewable energy power generation generally has intermittent and volatile problems, and requires energy storage to smooth and stabilize the operation of the power system.
According to the statistics of the National Energy Administration, in 2022, the installed capacity of new energy storage projects put into operation nationwide reached 8.7 million kilowatts, with an average energy storage duration of about 2.1 hours, an increase of more than 110% over the end of 2021.
As the proportion of renewable energy such as photovoltaic continues to increase, energy storage will play an indispensable role in the future power system.
The National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration put forward in the Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Development of New Energy Storage that the installed capacity of new energy storage will reach more than 30 million kilowatts by 2025. At that time, the new energy storage will enter the stage of large-scale development from the initial stage of commercialization.
Therefore, “energy storage” has become the hot topic of this year’s two sessions, and many CPPCC members and NPC representatives have made suggestions.
Song Hailiang, member of the CPPCC National Committee and secretary of the Party Committee and chairman of China Energy Construction Group (601868. SH), believes that the current stable business model for the application of new energy storage in the power system has not yet been fully formed. Therefore, he suggested that more efforts should be made to support enterprises to explore the
integrated solutions of new energy storage in application scenarios such as supporting the large-scale export of new energy bases, alleviating the pressure of power supply, and improving the local absorption capacity of new energy, so as to deeply explore the synergy value of new energy storage integration.
Song Hailiang also suggested that appropriate policies should be given to enterprises to explore the business model of shared energy storage. Do a good job in the overall design of energy storage
participating in all kinds of markets, realize effective connection, and guide independent energy storage operators to form diversified cost channels and profit channels.
First of all, the photovoltaic industry and the energy storage industry naturally go hand in hand and achieve each other.
“The development of photovoltaic industry needs to rely on energy storage to move forward hand in hand, not alone.” Zhang Guangchun, senior vice president and general manager of energy storage
technology of Atlas Solar Power Group, told First Financial that at present, the power generation cost of photovoltaic industry has reached the level of affordable grid access, which is true in many countries and regions around the world. However, the power grid has limited bearing capacity, and the solution of this problem depends on energy storage technology. The main force of energy storage is electrochemical
energy storage, which is the lithium ion electrochemical energy storage mentioned today.
Zhang Guangchun further said that today we see the development of the energy storage field is like the scene of the photovoltaic industry 15 years ago, but I think that the development speed of the energy storage industry will be faster than that of the photovoltaic industry 15 years ago. Behind this is both the attention of the capital market to the industry and the technical support. “In the process of rapid
development of energy storage, it is inevitable that there will be imbalances. We now have industries, products, markets and policies, but they need to be improved. We hope that in a few years, after adding energy storage (cost), the cost of photovoltaic power generation will still be lower than the cost of traditional energy generation.”
However, at present, there are still pain points to be solved in the development of the energy storage industry, such as the current situation of mandatory allocation of energy storage for domestic scenery projects.
“Like photovoltaic, the development of energy storage is not smooth.” Qu Xiaohua, chairman and CEO of CSIQ. US, said publicly on March 8 at the 6th CSIQ 38 Optical Storage Technology Forum that at present, the mandatory energy allocation and storage of domestic wind and solar projects is like a la carte, increasing costs, but no corresponding income. Supporting energy storage is not valued, and is generally allocated but not used. Last year, the utilization rate of energy storage allocated by China’s scenic projects was 6.1%. In this way, the energy storage equipment with low configuration and poor performance will have the chance to win the bid, and the bad currency drives the good currency, which has become a hidden danger for the development of the industry.
Qu Xiaohua further stressed that the good news is that the government has begun to pay attention to the situation of the domestic energy storage market and will introduce policies in the near future to return the domestic energy storage market to the right path of sustainable development.
Zhang Tianren, the representative of the National People’s Congress and the secretary of the Party Committee and chairman of Tianneng Holding Group (688819. SH), told the First Financial News, “I found during my research that one of the major problems facing the energy storage industry at present is that the allocation is not balanced. Among the energy storage projects under construction and completed at present, there are many distributed energy storage projects on the power generation side and few shared energy storage projects on the power grid side and the power consumption side.”
According to the reporter of China First Finance and Economics, by the end of 2022, more than 95% of the energy storage projects approved in the country were energy storage projects on the power generation side.
Therefore, Zhang Tianren suggested that the state further improve the new energy storage policy mechanism, issue the detailed rules for the implementation of the user-side energy storage access and acceptance management as soon as possible, break the glass wall of “selling electricity by partition”, reduce or cancel the basic capacity electricity charges of medium and large energy storage projects, and support the energy storage projects to participate in the power market as an independent market subject.
