At present, the mainstream energy storage equipment is mainly lithium-ion batteries, and an important application scenario is in the field of new energy vehicles, which also makes upstream chemical materials prosperous in the near future. First of all, the domestic industrial dimethyl carbonate (DMC) ex-factory price of lithium-ion battery electrolyte solvent materials rebounded, exceeding 7,000 yuan tons. The mainstream quotations of dimethyl carbonate in various regions continued to maintain stable quotations. Shandong mainstream quotations accept 6,200-6400 yuan tons, East China mainstream quotations accept 6,300-6500 yuan tons, and South China mainstream wire transfers 7,000-7200 yuan tons. The important reason for the price increase is that the downstream terminal new energy automobile industry is highly prosperous, the demand surges, and the centralized maintenance and closure of large upstream electrolyte plants have led to the increase in the price of dimethyl carbonate. Another important raw material for energy storage equipment, lithium hexafluorophosphate is not only the most important solute in the electrolyte of lithium-ion batteries, but also the most widely used electrolyte solute in industrial and commercial applications.
The price of lithium hexafluorophosphate rose strongly, from a minimum of less than 70,000 yuan to nearly 400,000 yuan. At present, the growth logic of energy storage equipment such as lithium-ion batteries that has received market attention and recognition mainly comes from the demand side of terminal new energy vehicles. In recent years, China's new energy 4.150, -0.03, -0.72% car sales have been on the rise. Although due to unfavorable factors such as the shortage of automotive chips and rising raw material prices, China's automobile production and sales fell year-on-year in June, but in the first half of 2021, the production and sales of new energy vehicles were 1.215 million and 1.206 million, a year-on-year increase of about 200%. The pain point of carbon neutrality is that the supply of clean energy is extremely unstable. The core purpose of carbon neutrality is to reduce carbon emissions, and new energy will replace fossil energy on a large scale as the mainstream energy source.
However, compared with fossil energy power generation, the biggest pain point of wind and photovoltaic power generation is exposed-the supply of clean energy is extremely unstable. Taking wind power as an example, wind power naturally has 'reverse peak shaving characteristics', that is, the actual situation of wind power generation often cannot match the grid. Wind activities are often opposite to residents’ life activities. The daily natural wind is usually small during the day and large at night. When a large amount of electricity is needed for production during the day, this leads to an insufficient supply of wind power; at night, people rest and power consumption drops sharply, but wind power generation begins to peak. In addition, too much power is injected into the grid within a certain period of time, which will affect the carrying capacity of the grid and cause serious overload. The instability of photovoltaic power generation is very important, because China’s important power-using region is the eastern region, and the western region is an important region for photovoltaic power generation. Therefore, whether it is new energy vehicles or new energy power generation, the core pain point lies in the energy storage link.
According to statistics, as of the end of 2020, the cumulative installed capacity of energy storage projects in my country was 35.6gw, accounting for 18.6% of the total global market, a year-on-year increase of 9.8%. Among them, the cumulative installed scale of electrochemical energy storage accounted for 9.2% of the cumulative scale of the country; at present, pumped storage is still an important means in my country, but according to current data, the growth rate of pumped storage installed capacity has been declining year by year from 2016 to 2019 Trend, it dropped to 0.9% in 2019. At the same time, other energy storage methods are also emerging. The reason why we still need to rely on pumped storage is that China's current power generation structure is still dominated by thermal power generation.
Pumped storage is an important means of thermal power, nuclear power or large power grid peak shaving, which has very strict geographic requirements. According to China's future energy structure, the difficulty in promoting wind power and photovoltaic power generation lies in the rapid development of other energy storage technologies, especially electrochemical energy storage technologies. Among electrochemical energy storage technologies, lithium-ion batteries have the largest cumulative installed capacity, accounting for 88.8%. In 2020, the scale of my country's newly commissioned electrochemical energy storage project was 1559.6mw, and the newly commissioned scale exceeded 1GW for the first time, which was 2.4 times that of the same period in 2019. It can be seen that the growth rate is quite fast.
In addition, from the perspective of current energy storage methods, lithium electronic batteries are the most widely used metal ions in electrochemical energy storage. Therefore, if we only see the logic that supports the recent rapid rise of concepts such as lithium-ion batteries and salt lake lithium extraction is the rapid rise of new energy vehicles, and there is a gap in the terminal applications of lithium-ion batteries, then this model may be even smaller. From a more far-reaching perspective, lithium metal ions and even other electrochemical metal ion resources will be an important cornerstone of the future global energy reform and energy storage development. The listed companies in the upstream and downstream of the energy storage equipment industry chain were sorted out. From the perspective of the technological path, the realization of electrochemical energy storage relies on energy storage batteries.
Energy storage battery is a device that converts chemical energy into electrical energy. Mainly focus on energy storage technologies such as lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries, accumulators and sodium-based batteries. Among them, lithium-ion batteries account for 90% of the existing electrochemical energy storage capacity, mainly divided into ternary lithium-ion batteries, lithium iron phosphate batteries, etc., combined with the energy storage equipment industry chain, can be divided into upstream raw materials and equipment, midstream energy storage System and integration, and downstream power system energy storage applications. Important raw materials upstream of energy storage equipment include cathode materials, anode materials, electrolytes, diaphragms and structural parts; the midstream mainly includes, but is not limited to, the integration and manufacturing of energy storage systems. A complete energy storage system generally includes four parts: battery pack, battery management system (BMS), energy management system (EMS) and energy storage converter (PCS); downstream is the power generation side, the grid side and the user side (such as commercial Users or new energy vehicles) application scenarios of energy storage equipment in power systems.