Renewable energy generation boosts the booming energy storage market

As people's living standards continue to improve, more and more fossil energy is consumed. In the process of energy conversion, a large amount of carbon dioxide is released, resulting in continued global warming and frequent extreme weather, which is constantly changing people's lifestyles. How to protect the earth on which we depend for survival has become a topic of common concern to all mankind.

On September 22, 2020, the Chinese government proposed at the 75th United Nations General Assembly: "China will increase its national independent contribution, adopt more powerful policies and measures, strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030, and strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060." It can be seen that carbon neutrality has risen to a national strategy.

Surveys show that oil accounts for the largest proportion of global energy consumption, and coal accounts for the largest proportion of my country's energy consumption. Against the backdrop of global carbon neutrality, it is particularly important to continuously reduce the consumption of fossil energy and vigorously develop clean energy such as photovoltaics and wind power.

According to the latest data released by the National Energy Administration, by the end of June 2023, my country's total installed power generation capacity will reach 2.71 billion kilowatts. Among them, hydropower installed capacity is 418 million kilowatts, wind power installed capacity is 389 million kilowatts, photovoltaic power generation installed capacity is 470 million kilowatts, and biomass power generation installed capacity is 43 million kilowatts. Among them, renewable energy installed capacity reached 1.322 billion kilowatts, historically exceeding coal-fired power, accounting for about 48.8% of my country's total installed capacity.

In the first half of 2023, my country's renewable energy power generation was 1.34 trillion kWh, of which wind power and photovoltaic power generation was 729.1 billion kWh, a year-on-year increase of 23.5%.

However, photovoltaic, wind power, hydropower and other technologies have unstable factors such as seasonality, intermittency and volatility. For example, photovoltaic power generation is greatly affected by sunlight intensity and angle, and is related to seasonal weather, climate and region, and is highly random. Wind power generation is greatly affected by wind speed, and the wind speed varies unpredictably, resulting in the intermittent nature of the electricity output by wind power generation. These factors increase the difficulty of peak regulation of the power grid.

With the rapid growth of renewable energy installed capacity, the power system's demand for various types of regulating power sources has increased rapidly. Energy storage is a necessary technology for the development of renewable energy. It can suppress, absorb and smooth the problem of unstable renewable energy generation, and plays a huge role in the improvement of renewable energy systems. At the same time, it can also help solve problems such as energy conversion and power regulation in the energy system, making renewable energy more stable and efficient.

In order to coordinate the output of renewable energy power generation, it is particularly important to build a corresponding energy storage system. The national and local governments have issued corresponding policies and made supporting energy storage construction requirements for new renewable energy power generation projects to solve the problems caused by the increase in the proportion of renewable energy power generation connected to the grid. At the same time, they have increased subsidies and support for user-side energy storage, built more large-scale industrial and commercial energy storage systems, achieved peak load shaving and valley filling, and ensured the stability of the power supply system.

Huayu Zhihang Power Energy Co., Ltd. focuses on the research and development and production of high-end energy storage batteries, and is committed to the research and development and production of power generation and user-side energy storage systems, providing the market with safe and efficient smart energy storage solutions, and striving to promote the global carbon neutrality process.

Since 2021, most provinces in my country have issued policies on energy storage configuration for new energy. All regions require that the storage scale of photovoltaic power stations be between 5% and 30% of installed capacity, and the configuration time is mainly 2-4 hours. Hebei, Henan, Shanghai, Shaanxi, Gansu and other places require the storage ratio to reach 20%. Zhejiang Province's "Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Demonstration and Application of New Energy Storage in Zhejiang Province" proposes to provide capacity compensation for peak-shaving projects with an annual utilization hour of not less than 600 hours. In addition, cities such as Hangzhou, Wenzhou, and Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province have also introduced corresponding energy storage subsidy policies. In 2023, the Jiangsu Provincial Development and Reform Commission issued a number of measures for the high-quality development of new energy storage projects (draft for comments), pointing out that by 2027, the scale of new energy storage projects in Jiangsu Province will reach about 5 million kilowatts, and the draft opinion clearly proposes relevant subsidy standards. The figure below is the mandatory storage policy across the country in 2022 (data source from the Internet, for reference only).

In order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, governments at all levels in my country continue to increase support for renewable energy power generation and provide strong policy support for supporting energy storage construction, with the aim of gradually reducing dependence on oil and coal. With the gradual depletion of fossil energy and the continuous rise in prices, the proportion of renewable energy power generation will increase, and the energy storage market will continue to flourish.