There is a lot of good news about new energy, and the market is strong. Speeding up the supporting energy storage is the inevitable choice under the background of the continuous improvement of new energy permeability. in the future, energy storage will deeply participate in the reform of electric energy system, or become the most definite subdivision track in the new energy industry chain.

The industry's leading sunshine power supply has increased by 15 times in one year. What is the core logic behind the growth of energy storage? What kind of investment opportunities are there?

Growth is full of imagination, with a compound global growth rate of 75% in five years.

China's energy storage will increase by 1.56% CAGR in 2020, 71% in 2016-2020, and expected to increase 45GWh in 2025. During the 14th five-year Plan period, the installed CAGR will be 70%, corresponding to the market size of 49.9 billion yuan.

China's energy storage market is initially on a large scale. China has the most complete photovoltaic and lithium industry chain in the world, has a large installed capacity of new energy, and has unique advantages in the development of energy storage industry.

Driven by rigid demand: energy storage is a necessary part of global energy transformation

The concept of global carbon neutralization has become a consensus, and it is a general trend to build a new power system with new energy as the main body.A high proportion of renewable energy will lead to a long-term and sustainable demand for energy storage in the power system.

Clean energy on the supply side and electrification on the demand side are the main features of the global power and even energy systems in the past 20 years, which will be further strengthened in the coming decades.

In the new power system, the probability of imbalance between supply and demand increases.Energy storage is the core of maintaining the stability of the system, improving the matching of power generation and load, and maintaining the balance of supply and demand of the system.

Maintain the stability of the power system from three aspects: the generation side, the user side and the power grid side.

Policy promotion, help energy storage to grow rapidly

The Chinese market, driven by policy, ushered in a second burst of growth. At the national level: programmatic documents are issued to guide supporting policies to be gradually improved; at the local level: mandatory matching and market-oriented guidance cooperate with each other.

In the past 21 years, the top-level policy has been accelerated, and the user side has exceeded expectations. China has issued the "guidance on accelerating the Development of New Energy Storage".The cumulative installation index of 30GW in 2025 is put forward, which specifies a clear path for the development of energy storage industry in the future.

The picture shows the pace of domestic policy release since 2020.

The time-sharing electricity pricing mechanism effectively improves the business model, and the energy storage on the user side ushered in a good opportunity for development.

In recent years, the global and domestic energy storage market has maintained a stable development trend, but the overall promotion is difficult to speed up, mainly due to the small peak-valley electricity price difference, the lack of a reasonable commercial application model, and the economy of the energy storage system has not been highlighted.

Today, the NDRC issued a notice on further improving the time-sharing electricity price mechanism, adjusting the peak-valley price difference, the economy of energy storage will be significantly improved, and it is expected that the development of energy storage on the user side, especially for industrial and commercial users, will be accelerated in the future.

The reduction in the cost of lithium battery leads to a significant reduction in the cost of energy storage.

Introduction to energy storage: the application of technology is rich and varied, and electrochemistry is the fastest developing direction.

There are many types of energy storage technology, which can be divided into two major schools: electrochemical energy storage and mechanical energy storage.Among themElectrochemical energy storage is the mainstream means of energy storage at present.The comprehensive advantage is obvious and will fully benefit from the industrial dividend. According to the different materials of positive and negative electrodes, electrochemical energy storage can be divided into lithium-ion battery, lead battery and nano-sulfur battery.

The electrochemical energy storage represented by iron lithium is the optimal scheme at the present stage.The construction cost of lithium electric energy storage system is about 1.5-2.50 yuan / Wh, of which energy storage system accounts for 80-85%. In the energy storage system, batteries account for the highest proportion, about 50%, other system components and management systems account for 20% and 15% respectively.

In the past year, the cost of iron-lithium batteries has been reduced by about 20 per cent, with a breakthrough in the number of cycles from 2000 to 3000, leading to a rapid decline in the cost of energy storage.

Battery technologies such as sodium batteries are expected to further reduce the cost of energy storage.The price of positive and negative electrode, electrolyte and current collector of sodium ion battery is lower than that of lithium battery material. When the technology is mature to achieve large-scale effect, there is more room for cost reduction.

Competition and cooperation coexist in the integration of industrial chain

Industry chain: battery and inverter link has the highest value

In the electrochemical energy storage industry chain, battery and inverter have high investment value, accounting for 60% and 20% respectively.

Energy storage system is mainly composed of energy storage battery system (including battery module and battery management system), energy storage inverter (PCS), energy management system (EMS) and other hardware systems.

The upstream of the battery module is lithium material, and the upstream of PCS and BMS mainly includes power semiconductors and all kinds of chips. Downstream of the energy storage system are energy storage system integrators and installers.

The future market pattern will be multi-dimensional and three-dimensional, and the coexistence of competition and cooperation will be the norm.

At present, not only battery manufacturers do integration (Ningde era, BYD, sea-based new energy, etc.), but also inverter manufacturers do integration (solar power, Shangneng Electric and Goodway, which is ready to enter, etc.). However, due to the long product verification cycle of the energy storage system (2-3 years), there is no final conclusion in the short term, but the echelon of manufacturers in the future will certainly be layered (price, system efficiency, cycle times and boundary conditions and other dimensions). The industry ushered in a benign clearing stage.

On the other hand, most manufacturers will sell their products (energy storage cells, converters) for export, and the manufacturers will encounter the situation of mutual integration. Although the end product links form competition, the mid-stream manufacturing level will cooperate.

A list of key companies in the industry

Ningde era: power battery leader high-intensity layout energy storage plate

The global power battery leader has a deep accumulation in the field of battery technology. After entering the energy storage market, the company joined hands with Nebula Co., Ltd., National Grid Integrated Energy Co., Ltd., Costas, Yongfu Co., Ltd., and other companies to layout many links of energy storage business.

The company's energy storage system business (mainly selling energy storage battery cells and modules) has an income of 39 million yuan in 2016, 1.943 billion yuan in 2020, a compound growth of 165% in four years, a contribution of 3.9% in 2020, and a gross profit margin of 36%.

Gu Dewei: household inverter takes the lead, energy storage performance is more flexible

With the earlier layout of energy storage inverters, the revenue of energy storage inverters increased rapidly from 23 million in 2016 to 159 million in 2020, with a compound speed increase of 62%, which is higher than the overall performance growth rate of the company.

In the future, the company will enter the field of industrial and commercial and ground power station energy storage inverters and enrich product solutions to form energy storage battery systems. This will affect the gross profit margin of the company's energy storage business to some extent, but the growth potential of the revenue side will be greatly increased.

Jinlang Technology: focus on Inverter products

The revenue of energy storage inverter is 5 million yuan in 2018 and 37 million yuan in 2020, with an increase of about 600% in two years. In terms of product and channel strategy, the company's energy storage inverter is mainly oriented to the household and small industrial and commercial side of the overseas market.