The world is racing towards the energy revolution, and energy storage has become a “super track”
Views：437Published：2023/9/13
Article Details
By definition, energy storage is the process of storing energy through an instrument or device and releasing it when needed. Its essence is to solve the problem of imbalance between power supply and demand.
To put it figuratively, energy storage means storing "energy", just like a power bank, which stores electrical energy and uses it when needed. It can store electricity during the day and use it at night, or it can store electricity on sunny days and use it on rainy days. Use electricity and adjust resources very flexibly to ensure the consumption of new energy.
In the past, people’s impression of “energy storage” mainly refers to pumped hydropower storage and lead-acid batteries. For example, pumped water storage uses electricity to pump water to the upper reservoir during low power load periods, and then releases water to the lower reservoir to generate electricity during peak power load periods. It can convert excess electric energy when the grid load is low into high-value electric energy during peak periods. Lead-acid batteries, such as solar street lights, solar garden lights, and centralized solar power stations seen on the market, all have functional units for storing energy, but at that time, lead-acid batteries were used to store energy.
But in fact, according to different forms of energy storage, energy storage can be divided into electric energy storage, hydrogen energy storage and thermal energy storage. Electrical energy storage can be divided into electrochemical energy storage and mechanical energy storage. Electrochemical energy storage is mainly familiar battery energy storage, including lithium batteries, lead batteries, sodium-sulfur batteries, etc.; while mechanical energy storage mainly includes water pumping. Energy storage, compressed air energy storage, flywheel energy storage, etc.
In other words, among electric energy storage, pumped hydro energy storage is a more traditional energy storage method, while electrochemical energy storage is a new energy storage method. Looking at the structure of China's energy storage market, the cumulative installed capacity of pumped energy storage accounts for more than 86%, while the cumulative installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage accounts for only about 12%.
The current hot energy storage market is mainly lithium battery energy storage. Among all installed electrochemical energy storage types, lithium batteries account for 92% and are currently the mainstream mode of electrochemical energy storage.
Why has lithium battery energy storage only emerged in recent years? On the one hand, with the development of the industry, lithium batteries have gradually highlighted their advantages and become the protagonist of energy storage functional units. On the other hand, the global energy shortage in recent years, coupled with China's emphasis on green energy and policy tendencies, have accelerated the transformation of energy storage from a functional unit to a market direction.
Reposted from: International Electronic Commerce, automatically translated by Google
