As a forward-looking technology for promoting the development of the new energy industry in the future, the energy storage industry will play a huge role in new energy grid connection, electric vehicles, smart grids, microgrids, distributed energy systems, and home energy storage systems. After more than ten years of development, China's energy storage industry is currently in an important stage of transition from demonstration application to early commercialization.
According to relevant data, in 2016, lithium-ion batteries accounted for 50% of the new energy storage solutions. It is expected that by 2025, lithium-ion batteries will continue to dominate, accounting for 80% of global power battery energy storage deployments.
The 13th Five Year Plan for Energy Development focuses on improving the system's peak shaving capacity as a major measure to address the shortcomings of power development, accelerate the construction of peak shaving power sources, accumulate and develop energy storage, and transform the scheduling operation mode. In addition, in strengthening the construction of peak shaving capacity in the power system, it is necessary to actively carry out the construction of energy storage demonstration projects, and promote the coordinated and optimized operation of energy storage systems with new energy and power systems.
It can be foreseen that as more and more demonstration projects of energy storage technology demonstrate good investment results, it will attract more investors in the future, and the commercial application of energy storage will become increasingly urgent.
At present, the energy storage industry is in a transitional stage towards the early stage of commercialization. At present, the energy storage market has not yet erupted. Dr. Xiong Bin from China Science and Technology Investment believes that, firstly, due to cost constraints, the profit margin is relatively weak. In addition, the production capacity of lithium battery manufacturers was limited before, and facing the new energy vehicle industry with high price tolerance, the development momentum of the energy storage industry is insufficient; Secondly, policies are unclear, and the development of the energy storage market, especially peak valley regulation, needs to address institutional barriers at the electricity sales end. However, the previous slow progress in electricity reform has affected the development of the energy storage market.
Industry insiders suggest that the government should provide subsidies and support for the research and application of energy storage, and design reasonable subsidies and tax incentives based on the social benefits of energy storage applications. In terms of policy, diversified subsidy methods can be adopted and the use of subsidy funds can be strictly regulated. Furthermore, gradually liberalize access restrictions on the electricity market, encourage energy storage to directly participate in electricity market transactions, allow energy storage to participate as a power source in power supply services, and compensate for peak shaving and frequency regulation services provided by energy storage.
Although the subsidy policy has not been introduced for a long time, it has not affected the enthusiasm of some enterprises to participate. Zhang Zifeng, Chief Engineer of BYD Electric Power Research Institute, has stated that BYD will have more commercial operation projects to be implemented from 2017 to 2018, and the energy storage market is already at a critical point before the outbreak.
Many market participants have expressed optimism about the future development of energy storage, and predict that the explosion of the energy storage market should be achieved in 2018 and 2019, mainly based on the further decrease in lithium battery costs, the gradual sufficiency of lithium battery production capacity, and the promotion of electricity reform, which has led to favorable policies for the development of the energy storage market.