Long term energy storage - is it the next disruptive energy technology
Recently, the latest IPCC report on global climate change was released, which once again issued an alarm to the world. As a key component of building a zero-carbon power grid in the context of “dual carbon”, energy storage has finally ushered in an explosive development opportunity.
The energy storage in most people’s minds is mainly pumped hydro energy storage with short discharge time (<10hr) or electrochemical energy storage systems dominated by lithium batteries, accounting for 93% of the total installed energy storage capacity in the world. Here are Top 5 electric energy storage lithium battery companies for reference.
With the continuous innovation of the power structure, will it be the next disruptive energy storage technology direction? Let’s take a closer look at it from the perspectives of definition, application, and commercialization process.
What is long term energy storage
To date, the duration of long term energy storage has not been clearly defined, and the U.S. Department of Energy classifies it as 10 hours or more of continuous discharge at rated power.
However, it is meaningless to focus only on the charging and discharging time away from the usage scene. A relatively accepted statement in the industry is an energy storage system that can realize charge-discharge cycles across the sky, across the month, and even across seasons.
In the most lively electrochemical energy storage track, the long term energy storage star company Form Energy recently released iron-air batteries and reached a strategic cooperation with ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel manufacturer. The first project will be in Minnesota in 2023. put into service.
Professor Cui Yi of Stanford University also established EnergyVenue in 2020, focusing on metal hydrogen batteries widely used in the aerospace field, and plans to carry out a pilot project with the Hong Kong and China Gas Company.
Flow batteries are also a long term energy storage commercial technology path. Zinc8, Primus, Invinity and other European and American battery startups mainly focus on zinc flow batteries. Asian energy companies such as Sumitomo Electric, Rongke, and Puneng use vanadium flow batteries as their main technology, and have already begun to compete with mainstream lithium battery manufacturers in 4-8 hour energy storage projects.
Of course, long term energy storage covers various energy storage methods other than electrochemistry. In the field of mechanical energy storage, in addition to the most cost-effective traditional pumped storage energy storage, a number of new energy storage technologies focusing on compressed air and gravity energy storage have emerged, and demonstrations at the 100 megawatt level will be launched in the next two or three years Projects like Hydrostor, Highview, Energy Vault, etc.
In addition, thermal energy storage (such as molten salt energy storage company Malta), chemical energy storage (hydrogen, ammonia) and other technologies have gradually entered people’s field of vision.
long term energy storage is still in the mid-to-early R&D demonstration stage where a hundred schools of thought contend, and the winner has not yet been announced. At present, electrochemical energy storage is in a relatively favorable competitive position due to the promotion of the power battery industry and is not restricted by the geographical environment.
Why we need long term storage
First of all, in order to achieve carbon neutrality goals, thermal power plants will gradually withdraw from the historical stage, and are expected to account for 10% of the total power generation or even less.
When such stable base-load power generation resources are decreasing day by day, long term energy storage + large-scale wind and solar projects will likely replace fossil energy sources as base-load power plants, which will have a profound impact on the mid- and late-stage construction of a zero-carbon power system.
Secondly, with the continuous development of solar energy and wind energy, the intermittency of its power generation has more and more serious negative effects on the power grid. After the ecosystem is destroyed, some hydropower stations are also facing longer and longer dry seasons and cannot guarantee output.
And to solve this problem, building more transmission networks is not enough. long term energy storage can adjust the fluctuation of new energy power generation in a longer time dimension by virtue of its large capacity and long cycle, avoid grid congestion when clean energy is surplus, and increase clean energy consumption when load peaks.
Frequent natural disasters (such as severe cold in Texas, wildfires in California, rainstorms in Zhengzhou, etc.) will not only cause large-scale power outages that affect daily life, but also accelerate the aging of power transmission and distribution equipment and increase grid operating costs.
Other external force majeure factors, such as the blockage of natural gas pipeline transportation and the shortage of coal supply, will also lead to a rise in electricity prices due to the multi-day or even seasonal supply shortage of energy resources. Another major application of long term energy storage is to ensure power supply in extreme weather and reduce social electricity costs.
How far is long term energy storage from commercialization
Although the long term demand is considerable, the economic account of long term energy storage is still difficult to calculate.
If the long term energy storage simply follows the profit model of short term energy storage, the economic benefits will be limited.
The biggest advantage of long term energy storage compared with short term energy storage is its capacity marginal cost (Marginal Cost per kWh). Power and capacity can be expanded relatively independently, avoiding the additional cost of unused power. High flexibility in switching overlays.
Most of the electric auxiliary service market is basically sufficient for 2-4 hour short term systems. If long term energy storage wants to break through the commercial barriers of short term energy storage, it is necessary to solve the current difficulties of short term technology and demonstrate its economic value in the dimension of longer duration.
It is not easy to intuitively and accurately measure the economic value of long term energy storage in a longer time dimension.
The existing power grid capacity expansion planning model is the product of the traditional power grid operation mode in the last century, and only a few representative time periods are extracted from the whole year for power grid simulation simulation analysis.
Then calculate the system reliability under various energy ratios, lack of consideration for extreme weather and flexibility, and naturally cannot reflect the long term value of long term energy storage.
Take the long term new energy expansion planning model RESOLVE used by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) as an example. The model samples 37 typical days to simulate the power system production one by one. Each single-day sample does not have any time continuity. Discharge can only be done within 24 hours,
This restricts the flexible response of long term energy storage in multi-day scenarios, and it is impossible to accurately quantify the impact of extreme climates on the power grid—it is precisely these small-probability “black swan” events that directly drive investment decisions for major projects.
Secondly, the RESOLVE model only supports the design of three energy storage systems: lithium-ion energy storage, liquid flow energy storage and pumped hydro storage, and does not fully consider other new energy sources, resulting in high cost estimates.
To solve this problem, more and more companies and research institutions have launched their own models, such as Form Energy’s Formware, Vibrant Energy’s WIS:dom, Energy Exemplar’s Plexos, MIT-Princeton’s open source software GenX, etc.
In addition to the unclear economic benefits, the cost of long term energy storage is also a roadblock to its commercialization.
A recent MIT research team in Nature Energy explored the impact of the cost of long term energy storage and other technical characteristics on the overall cost of generating electricity in a zero-carbon grid. Research suggests that long term energy storage will need to be priced at least $50/kWh before it is more widely used;
To significantly reduce the overall cost of electricity generation (>10%), the cost must fall within the range of $1/kWh – $10/kWh. In addition to the charging and discharging efficiency and cost of long term energy storage itself, there are many energy combinations (nuclear energy, fossil energy + carbon capture and storage technology, hydrogen energy, etc.) that can provide stable power services that can compete with it. The future development of these technologies and The cost also affects how much long term energy storage can occupy in the grid.
Like other hard technologies, long term energy storage will face challenges in production capacity, supply chain, construction, operation and other aspects along the way from R&D, demonstration, implementation to scale. Risks in each link must be strictly controlled to achieve the established goals cost target.
long term energy storage also faces significant financing challenges. To obtain project financing, the performance and reliability of the energy storage asset must be demonstrated to investors.
The current common practice is to conduct a third-party engineering report and issue a long term warranty agreement (O&M) and a capacity assurance agreement (Capacity Maintenance).
However, long term energy storage technology has not yet been supported by large-scale actual operation data, and it is difficult to provide comprehensive guarantees. Even if the company makes a promise, investors will still have doubts: who will take over the 30-year project cycle once the company goes bankrupt?
Many once-hot new energy startups such as LightSail Energy and Nikola have fallen from the altar due to technical fraud, which has increased investors’ doubts about unknown technologies and will inevitably increase the difficulty of long term energy storage.
Multinational governments led by the United States have begun to increase their support for long term energy storage technology. California, which is the vane of global new energy policy, recently announced a long term energy storage expansion plan of up to 50GW to achieve the 2060 carbon neutrality goal.
Eight California community joint power management agencies issued bids as early as the end of 2020 to purchase 500MW/4GWh of energy storage systems that clearly exceed 8 hours. The U.S. Department of Energy has begun offering low-interest loans in a bid to reduce the cost of long term energy storage by 90 percent over the next decade.
Breakthrough Energy Venture, led by Bill Gates, has also spent $1.5 billion with the department of Energy to accelerate the commercialization of long term energy storage in a public-private partnership.
Long term energy storage in China-current situation and enlightenment
China’s energy storage industry has finally ushered in growth opportunities after years of hard work and exploration. The economics of short term energy storage has just turned around under favorable policies such as time-of-use electricity prices and electricity markets.
The clarion call for realizing the “dual carbon” goal has just sounded, and it will take time to build a deep low-carbon power grid (2030-2050). Is it a bit “too ambitious” to talk about long term energy storage at this time?
In my opinion, now is the time to increase investment in long term energy storage.
At present, thermal power accounts for 68% of the country’s total power generation. In 2030, the proportion of thermal power generation needs to drop by nearly 20%. All the new power generation will be met by clean energy. In addition, the decommissioning of thermal power plants and the transformation of carbon sequestration will exacerbate extreme weather.
It means that in the next three to five years, there will be continuous fluctuations in the supply of regional power grids. The commercialization of long term energy storage within five years will be of great significance to China’s 2030 carbon peak.
How to reasonably measure the economic benefits of long term energy storage is also a challenge facing China. At present, electric power research institutions such as the Electric Power Research Institute have their own production simulation software. The results of these power planning analysis will directly affect the scale of long term energy storage in China.
We are already faced with a complex power system with cross-regional, multiple power generation types, dual-track parallel market and plan, distributed and centralized hybrid. Therefore, it is necessary to accelerate the upgrading and transformation of power planning, and consider more persistent extreme weather in the model. Set reasonable economic and technical parameters for energy storage.
Strictly control the quality of massive power grid data, carry out 8760 hours of continuous simulation throughout the year, and use open source model data, academic-industry integration, etc. to brainstorm the most economical and reliable power storage configuration scheme.
In addition, it is also necessary to steadily promote the market mechanism and policy support for long term energy storage technology. Domestic long term energy storage technology is dominated by flow batteries, and there are very few long term energy storage companies with non-electrochemical technology routes.
As the geopolitical game intensifies, we need to be more optimistic and patient with our own startups. On the basis of due diligence, we can help long term energy storage technology get out of the funding dilemma in various forms such as public-private cooperation and policy market top-level design. , should implement energy storage technical standards, encourage more power companies to make more scientific and systematic plans for long term energy storage needs, and clarify the use and long term needs of energy storage in the tender.
The future power system will be multi-energy complementary. The new energy + energy storage model will usher in a historic opportunity, and long term energy storage will also become an indispensable part of the carbon neutral strategy.
In the past ten years, CATL as the lead company for Top 10 Energy storage battery companies and Top 10 power battery companies has taken the top spot in the fields of energy storage and power batteries by relying on technological innovation and hard work. In the next ten years, in the field of long term energy storage, the leaders from China may also rush to the forefront of the times.
