The Zhitong Finance App learned that Guojin Securities released a research report saying that recently, lithium carbonate prices and energy storage system tender prices are running steadily at an overall low level, providing favorable conditions for the release of energy storage demand throughout the year. Although demand is currently in the low season, domestic energy storage tenders in January-February and US utility optical storage installations in January still more than doubled. With the gradual implementation of future global interest rate reduction policies, energy storage demand is expected to explode quarterly. Key recommendations: 1) Under the price reduction cycle for raw materials such as silicon and lithium carbonate, the volume and profit can be realized in large storage chains with high volume and profit flexibility (such as Sunshine Power Supply) 300274.SZ ), Artes (688472.SH), Shenghong Co., Ltd. (300693.SZ), Nandu Power (300068.SZ); 2) Household storage industry chains with marginal restoration of shipments and low valuation, such as Costa (002518.SZ).

Guojin Securities's views are as follows:

In February, the price of lithium carbonate fluctuated around 9.6-97,000 yuan/ton. In February, some lithium salt companies entered a state of seasonal maintenance, compounded by weak downstream demand. They still mainly removed inventory. Market transactions were relatively lackluster, and the overall market operation was stable.

In January and February, the target projects for domestic lithium battery energy storage systems were 0.49 and 3.75 GWh, respectively. The winning projects were mainly distributed and stored for wind and solar projects and large-scale energy companies. At the same time, there were also tenders for some separate/shared energy storage and centralized user-side projects. In January-January 2024, the cumulative bid scale for domestic lithium battery energy storage systems exceeded 4.24 GWh, an increase of 259.5% over the previous year.

Judging from the winning bid price, as upstream lithium carbonate prices stopped falling and stabilized, the price of energy storage systems gradually stabilized on February 2h. On February 2h, a total of 2 projects were bid for the lithium iron phosphate energy storage system. The average bid opening price was 0.74 yuan/Wh, which was the same as the previous month. Looking at the winning bid provinces, in addition to framework/collection, the remaining projects were mainly concentrated in Ningxia, Qinghai, Shandong, Tibet, etc. Among them, Qinghai Province opened bids for a total of 1.48 GWh for three power plant projects.

European gas futures continued to decline in January-February. As of February 27, the Dutch TTF gas futures price was 24 euros/MWh, falling to a low of nearly three years. There are two main reasons for the decline in this round of natural gas: first, Europe has abundant natural gas reserves, and the overall inventory level at the end of February was still above 63%, 1.5 PCT higher than last year; second, the average temperature in winter in Europe was slightly higher than the historical average. Combined with distributed optical storage and heat pumps, the penetration rate of distributed optical storage and heat pumps increased, and European gas consumption decreased relatively. Taking Germany as an example, natural gas heating in December fell 16% compared to 2022. However, looking at the medium to long term, Europe's gas supply structure is currently concentrated, heavily dependent on US liquefied natural gas supply. The supply and demand structure is clearly weak, and it is expected that there is limited room for European gas futures to decline further.

According to the US Energy Administration, in January 2024, US utility-scale photovoltaics added 2.25 GW of installed capacity, up 86.9% year on year. In January, 148 MW of utility scale energy storage was added, up 123.4% year on year, and utility photovoltaic energy storage all increased year on year. Judging from the planned installation situation during the year, the US utility-scale PV installation plan for February-December was 33.4 GW, an increase of 93.2% over the previous year. In February-December, the US utility scale energy storage plan installed 14.6 GW, an increase of 131.77% over the previous year.

Risk warning: the rebound in raw material prices exceeds expectations; risk of international trade; risk of exchange rate fluctuations.