After several days of interpretation and sharing, we have fully understood the development background of China's energy storage industry, the development status of related technologies, the current status of the energy storage industry's business model, as well as the current corporate layout and financing status of the energy storage industry in recent years. Finally, we have ushered in this year's event. In the summary of the report, China exportsemi net will work with you today to look forward to the future development of the energy storage industry: the prospects are bright, but at the same time, it must withstand multiple tests before we can usher in a real industry explosion.
As the development of new energy accelerates, new energy storage has high hopes as a solution to improve the safe and efficient utilization of new energy. Starting from 2021, new energy storage represented by electrochemical energy storage will usher in an important period of opportunity and enter the fast lane of development driven by demand, policy and capital. At the same time, business economics, application security, policies and market competition mechanisms that need to be improved have also brought many challenges to the development of the industry.
On the user side, domestic industrial and commercial and overseas household energy storage are developing rapidly. As far as domestic industry and commerce is concerned, the introduction of time-of-use electricity prices and electricity premiums for high-energy-consuming enterprises has improved the economics of peak-shaving and valley-filling on the user side. The domestic lithium battery market has a pricing advantage compared with foreign countries, which is also an important driver of market development. force. In the future, with the introduction of virtual power plant policies, more new values will be brought to the market. For example, industrial and commercial households can participate in grid aggregation transactions for peak shaving. As for household energy storage, due to the current low household electricity prices in China and the wide coverage of the power grid, the household market is not yet economically viable for large-scale development. In overseas markets, due to reasons such as high electricity prices, increasing proportion of new energy, and weak power grids, there is a large market space, and profit margins are relatively guaranteed. Compared with local companies in Europe and the United States, Chinese companies occupy a relatively small share of the terminal product market. However, in the key links of the household energy storage industry chain, including energy storage lithium batteries and energy storage converters, domestic power battery companies, Photovoltaic inverter companies have strong competitiveness and continue to make efforts in the overseas home storage market.
The competitive landscape of the downstream market places different requirements on the core competitiveness of energy storage companies. For Chinese energy storage companies, the household storage market is currently mainly overseas, and is focused on the consumer side for mass consumers. Business expansion relies more on channels and brand promotion. Whether the company has localization capabilities determines whether it can further develop. Important factors; on the power supply side/grid side/industrial and commercial energy storage side, the focus is on to B facing enterprises, and the main market is currently domestic, so the resource channels of energy storage enterprises and the control of system security and cost are the key to their development Key factors (Table 21).
Table 21 : Analysis of key factors for energy storage companies to succeed in different application markets
A single revenue model triggers low-price competition, and safety and sustainable development deserve attention. At present, new energy storage as a whole is in the stage of rapid growth by leveraging the favorable policies. Market participants are intertwined in all aspects of the industry. This is reflected in the fact that almost all power grid affiliated companies, wind power and photovoltaic equipment manufacturers, battery companies, PCS companies, etc. are flocking to the system integration track. , but from the perspective of the overall competitive strategy, the low-price war is intensifying. According to KPMG consulting research, the typical gross profit level of enterprises in each link of the current new energy storage industry chain does not exceed 30% (the gross profit margin of the electrochemical energy storage battery diaphragm link is around 50% ), in addition, the gross profit margin levels of many listed energy storage companies have also shown a downward trend. The reason is that the current driving force for the development of new energy storage mainly comes from the policy side, that is, the mandatory distribution of storage on the power generation side. When the cost of energy storage is mainly borne by the power generation side and the source of energy storage revenue is relatively single, power generation companies will, for economic reasons, They are more inclined to choose low-cost energy storage projects and relatively ignore performance and safety issues. If this is transmitted to energy storage suppliers, it will lead to low-price competition. In the long run, the overall market will not be able to achieve a healthy clearing, and the low-cost and low-performance construction model will also It lays hidden safety risks for the energy storage industry, damages the overall ecology of the industry, and even harms the safety of people's lives and property.
The long-term prospects of independent energy storage power stations are good, but the economics of project implementation are not good enough in the short term. As policies continue to promote independent energy storage projects to participate in power market transactions, China's large-scale application of new energy storage will mainly rely on independent energy storage power stations, and there is broad room for future development. According to CNESA statistics72 , the planned/under construction scale of China’s independent energy storage power stations in the first half of 2022 was 45.3GW, accounting for more than 80% of all planned/under construction new energy storage projects. However, based on another CNESA statistical data73 , the new operational scale of China’s independent energy storage power stations in the first three quarters of 2022 is approximately 345.5MW, which is significantly lower than the planned/under construction scale. Considering that independent energy storage power stations are Electrochemical energy storage is the main focus, and the construction period of electrochemical energy storage is generally 3-6 months. Therefore, the gap between the operational volume and the planned volume of independent energy storage power stations obviously cannot be explained by the construction period alone. In fact, the main reason for this gap may be the investor's lack of motivation for construction. When calculating the project's return on investment, it needs to consider many factors, such as ancillary service compensation costs, spot market price differences, new energy capacity leasing costs, energy storage Number of power station calls, effective utilization time, etc. Under China's current power market mechanism, these considerations are affected by changes in policies and market rules, are highly volatile, and are difficult to quantify. This has caused investors to fall into the dilemma of "can't figure it out - don't dare to invest in construction - can't figure it out". Promoting the implementation of independent energy storage power station projects requires further optimization of the power market mechanism.
Capital speculation urgently calls for cold thinking, and high-quality energy storage tracks and targets need to be carefully screened. In the past two years, energy storage from the secondary market to the primary market has been favored by capital, mainly because the industry has been stimulated by the demand side. Domestic energy storage industry policies have continued to drive demand on the source and grid side. Overseas, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, energy crisis, etc. Factors stimulate household energy storage demand. It is expected that as domestic demand for strong distribution is gradually released, European energy prices stabilize and measures are taken to repair its own supply capacity, China's energy storage industry will face the risk of insufficient growth momentum. From the supply side, although there are many segments in the energy storage industry chain, high-quality opportunities are relatively scarce. In terms of tracks, based on the public views of many investors, many popular tracks such as electrochemical energy storage and supporting industries have already been laid out by giant companies in advance, making it difficult for external investors to enter. In addition, the downstream tracks that are still in the market cultivation stage currently have relatively small profits, and many venture capital institutions are forced to flock to the upstream. Upstream mineral resource-based companies have large financing amounts, and ordinary institutions are powerless. Instead, lithium carbonate refining and other tracks are relatively Favored by this type of capital, although related companies have low gross profits (15%-20%), they have fast capital turnover and wide product sales, so they are favored. Specific to the targets, high-potential entrepreneurial investors are relatively concentrated and valuations are relatively high. However, many energy storage companies have not yet formed a stable and reasonable business model, which makes it more challenging for investors to identify high-quality projects.
Improving the market-oriented mechanism for energy storage cost guidance is the key to the transformation of the energy storage industry from the early stage of commercialization to large-scale. The energy storage industry is in a critical period of transformation from the early stage of commercialization to large-scale development. Economics is the key to whether the next step of energy storage goes smoothly. It is necessary to improve the top-level design of energy storage cost management and run through the economy through market-oriented methods. sex. In April 2022, the Price and Cost Investigation Center of the National Development and Reform Commission published an article titled "Improving the Energy Storage Cost Compensation Mechanism to Help Build a New Power System with New Energy as the Main Body", proposing to strengthen the top-level design of energy storage policies and explore solutions to the constraints that restrict energy storage development. Bottleneck ideas and methods promote the vigorous development of various energy storage technologies. The article proposes three research directions: first, to study and establish the functional positioning and role value of various types of energy storage in building new power systems; second, to accelerate the formulation of cost-diversion mechanisms for various types of energy storage in different application scenarios; third, to Conduct comparative research on the economics of various energy storage technologies in the same application scenarios of new power systems.
72. In the next five years , the average annual installed capacity of independent energy storage will reach 7.2GW! -Polaris Energy Storage Network
73. In the first three quarters of 2022 , 933.8MW/1911.0MWh of new energy storage was newly put into operation in China - Polaris Energy Storage Network
Report source: KPMG analysis
How much do you know about the development background of the energy storage industry?
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