According to statistics, the global installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage is expected to be about 65Gwh in 2022, and it will reach 1,160GWh by 2030, of which 70% is the demand from the power generation side, which is the main source of power to support the installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage.
At this stage, the global power generation structure is still dominated by fossil energy, but in the future, with the advancement of net-zero carbon emission targets in various countries around the world, the proportion of renewable energy in the power system will further increase. With the large-scale access of new energy power generation and electricity consumption, in order to overcome the intermittent and fluctuating wind power, the entire power system will undergo a transformation from power source, grid, load to power source, grid, load, and energy storage. It has become the fourth basic element of the new power system, and the new energy storage technology has become a new driving force for the decarbonization of the power system.
Energy storage application scenarios involve various power scenarios such as the power supply side, the grid side, the user side, and distributed microgrids. The diversity of application scenarios determines the diversification of energy storage technologies. Among them, electrochemical energy storage technologies represented by lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, and flow batteries have achieved rapid development in recent years, and their application scale has moved from megawatt-level demonstration applications to gigawatt-level large-scale applications.
Benefiting from the rapid development of power batteries, the lithium-ion battery industry chain has entered a mature stage of commercialization, and its application in the field of energy storage also occupies the mainstream of the electrochemical energy storage market, with a market share of more than 90%. The cost of using lithium-ion batteries has risen significantly; in terms of sodium-ion batteries, although the industrial layout is still in its infancy, compared with high-priced lithium resources, the advantages of rich raw material resources for sodium-ion batteries will gradually appear in large-scale applications. It is expected to complement the lithium-ion battery; for the flow battery, because it can better meet the long-term energy storage (energy storage duration ≥ 4h) needs of the power system, it will also usher in the development of large-capacity long-term energy storage application scenarios in the future. Opportunities, such as the availability and ease of recycling of raw materials for all-vanadium flow batteries and zinc-bromine flow batteries, have entered the stage of demonstration applications.
