Who will win in the energy storage industry among lithium batteries, sodium batteries, hydrogen energy, and vanadium batteries ?

China's energy storage industry has historically made industrial planning based on the rhythm and economy of cost reduction. If the proportion of photovoltaic wind power generation will reach the zero boundary of 25-30% in 2025 (only 7.5% in 2020), under the impact of intermittent energy on the grid, energy storage will become an inevitable choice to solve the problem of grid consumption, then In the face of the newly installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage of 1.87GW in China in 2021, the elasticity of demand growth is huge.

The future of China's energy storage: market-oriented competition, multi-technical routes， the downstream of energy storage are power grids, power station operations, households, etc., which are different from automotive lithium batteries (long certification cycle and high consistency requirements) with high barriers to entry and high concentration. , it is difficult to appear an oligarchic pattern, and more is a competitive pattern centered on economic and cost advantages, more like the photovoltaic industry. Put it in the context of the industry to see the differences, evolution and future of technology routes.

hydrogen energy industry chain is complex, including hydrogen production, storage and transportation, hydrogenation, stacks, etc. It is most like natural gas among the three major fossil energy sources. Although it is the cleanest, it is likely to be supplemented in the energy field in the future based on its transportation bottleneck. Not the protagonist; the application of hydrogen energy can be divided into bus, heavy truck, marine, and backup power sources with reference to Ballard's annual report . The simple way is to look for alternatives to diesel and fuel oil. It’s not much to stare at commercial vehicles, but looking at the consumption of diesel and gasoline, the former is larger. Can the ceiling of valuation be opened? In a longer period, in addition to energy applications, hydrogen energy is the emission reduction demand of a large number of industrial fields (especially chemical industry).

sodium battery is likely to be faster than the market expects, mainly based on its theoretical cost advantage and the reuse of the lithium battery industry chain. Most of the production capacity from batteries to positive electrodes, negative electrodes, and separators can be used in general. This is similar to the photovoltaic field. The competition between single crystal and polycrystalline, and heterojunction are different, and the resistance of the mature industry chain is very small. Sodium battery will not subvert the competition pattern of lithium battery leader, it is more of an opportunity for the industry. We need to look for the difference between sodium battery and lithium battery on the material side, such as the process and cost difference between negative electrode and hard carbon/soft carbon, and several different routes. Cathode precursor performance and cost differences.

liquid flow system (vanadium power) , such as safety, long life and easy recovery, are the best solution for energy storage in the long run, but the speed of industrialization depends first on the speed of hydrogen fuel cell cost reduction. Most of the industrial chain capabilities (especially the material link) and leading competitiveness will be passed on to the flow system. We pay more attention to the common components of hydrogen fuel cells and flow batteries in the stack, such as bipolar plates, proton exchange Membranes, gas diffusion layers, etc., the application of hydrogen energy in the energy field should not be the valuation ceiling of upstream materials.

Market structure: The proportion of electrochemical energy storage has increased rapidly, and lithium batteries are still the mainstream . Based on the development history of photovoltaic energy storage in Germany, the installed capacity of distributed energy storage is mainly based on the electricity consumption of industrial enterprises and the difference in peak-to-valley electricity prices, which reflects economy.

The principle of lithium battery and sodium battery is the same, and the road to industrialization of sodium battery is smooth. Wide resources, low cost, the best application in energy storage .

The working principle of sodium-ion batteries is the same as the "rocking-chair" principle of lithium-ion batteries, and the reversible deintercalation of sodium ions (Na+) between positive and negative materials is used to achieve charge and discharge. The sodium-ion battery is mainly composed of a positive electrode, a negative electrode, a separator and an electrolyte, and is basically compatible with the production equipment of lithium-ion batteries, which reduces the difficulty of industrialization.

Lithium raw material prices continued to rise. As of March 2022, the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate, the main raw material, exceeded 500,000 yuan per ton, a record high. The abundance of lithium is low, with a crustal abundance of only 0.006%, and most of them are concentrated in South America, causing supply anxiety for major battery manufacturers.

Zhongke Haina estimates that sodium-ion battery materials have significant cost advantages, which are about 1/3 lower than lithium iron phosphate batteries. The raw material cost of copper-based sodium-ion battery is 0.29 yuan/Wh, the material cost of lithium iron phosphate battery is 0.43 yuan/Wh, and the cost of lead-acid battery is 0.40 yuan/Wh.

1）The sodium resource is abundant, the price is low and stable, and the price will remain at 1000-4000 yuan/ton in 10 years. 2) The element selection is cheaper; 3) The hard carbon and soft carbon used in the negative electrode have lower process requirements, lower power consumption, and have low-cost potential; 4) Inexpensive aluminum foil for the negative electrode current collector .

Flow batteries "tailor-made" for energy storage are especially suitable as large-scale energy storage power station systems .

Core advantage one: fundamentally avoid deflagration - safety .

Core advantage 2: Extremely long working life - Durable energy storage systems are generally static facilities with low requirements for weight and volume, and energy density is not a key indicator. In addition to the general advantages of flow batteries, there are three advantages: miniaturized all-vanadium flow batteries for use with household photovoltaics. The volume is 3-7 times that of lithium batteries (1) Environmentally friendly all-vanadium redox flow batteries are fully enclosed and operate with almost zero emissions. (2) If the residual value is higher, the vanadium element in the electrolyte will not be lost, and the residual value is about 70%. (3) Convenient recovery The electrolyte contains only a single transition metal and is easy to extract . The all-vanadium flow battery is the most mature of all current flow battery technologies and the most likely to achieve large-scale commercialization.

The hydrogen fuel cell stack is the core value of the fuel cell system, and China's domestic stacks have shortcomings in the lack of core materials and key technologies. Among the vanadium-hydrogen shared materials, the graphite bipolar plate is basically domestically produced, and the proton exchange membrane and the gas diffusion layer are still mainly imported , and the cost cannot be controlled.