On the one hand, the price bottomed out, on the other hand, the installed capacity kept growing. In the first half of 2024, energy storage enterprises were constantly looking for new opportunities under the competitive pattern of "ice and fire.

On June 25, at the site of the Summer Davos Forum, Zeng Yuqun, chairman and CEO of Ningde Times, responded to the company's call for employees to "struggle for a hundred days" and said, "Struggle for a hundred days is to call on everyone to practice basic skills. In the environment of new energy roll prices, value is the most important."

"According to the bidding for the battery core frame in 2024, the quotation for the energy storage battery core has been as low as 0.409 yuan/Wh, which is more than 50% lower than the reserve price in January 2023." Chang Ke, an analyst at the New Energy Division of Shanghai Steel Union, told a reporter from the Securities Daily that the energy storage industry should not only have prices, but should also include multiple dimensions such as technology, products, safety, after-sales, capital, and channels. Enterprises need to gradually shift from "price war" to "value war" to promote the development of the entire energy storage industry.

Global InfoLinkLithium batterySupply chain data show that in the first quarter of 2024, the global shipment of energy storage cells reached 38.82GWh, and the large storage market still maintained its growth trend, up 10.3 percent year-on-year. At the same time, the products circulating in the big storage market also began to change. In the first quarter of 2024, the penetration rate of 300Ah + products in the global large storage market was 22%, and the penetration rate is expected to be close to 50% in the fourth quarter of this year.

Since the end of last year, from the latest energy storage technology released by leading manufacturers, the energy density of domestic energy storage lithium batteries has further broken through to 500Ah.

On June 13, Xinwanda released 625Ah large battery storage cell "Xinyue", up 8.8 from the previous 314Ah battery cell. On April 9, Ningde Times released the world's first energy storage system with zero attenuation in 5 years and capable of mass production, which realized the ultra-high energy density of lithium iron phosphate energy storage battery, reaching 430Wh/L. Industry insiders predict that the product has a single cell capacity of at least 587Ah. In addition, including Li-Wei, Ruipu Lanjun, etc., have also poured into the 500Ah + track.

He Zhuoxin, a researcher at the China Chemical and Physical Power Industry Association, told a reporter from the Securities Daily: "In the initial investment in energy storage, the unit power cost is higher. As the battery capacity increases, the unit energy cost of the system will show higher economics. It means higher cost performance."

Taking the 5-year zero-attenuation Tianheng energy storage system in Ningde era as an example, the energy storage system can achieve high energy of 6.25MWh in a standard 20-foot container, increase the energy density per unit area by 30%, reduce the floor area of the whole station by 20%, and achieve higher benefits through the upgrade of energy density.

However, some people in the industry have questioned the application scenario of 500Ah battery, is such a high-equipped large battery facing excessive configuration? In this regard, a number of leading energy storage battery companies directly lock the application scenario of large energy storage batteries in the long-term energy storage market.

As early as the end of 2023, Xiamen Haichen Energy Storage introduced the MIC1130Ah battery, which increased the energy density of the battery core to 400Wh/L, and proposed to be a special battery for long-term energy storage specially built for the 4 to 8-hour long-term energy storage market.

The Ningde Times stated at the investor relations event held on June 21 that the current energy storage market is highly competitive and the overall demand is good. Among them, there is an increasing trend in the duration of domestic allocation and storage, while the duration of overseas allocation and storage is up to 4 to 6 hours.

McKinsey, a global consultancy, had previously predicted that long-term energy storage would grow on a large scale after 2025, with a global scale of 30GW to 40GW. According to the relevant analysis, after the proportion of new energy power exceeds 20%, long-term energy storage will become a new demand.

He Zhuoxin said that long-term energy storage generally refers to energy storage technology that lasts for more than 4 hours, and it also has the characteristics of long life and high safety. "For long-term energy storage, the most important and direct value is to provide support for the flexibility of the power system."

Chang Ke believes that the contradiction between the intermittent supply of new energy and the continuous and stable power demand of the power grid can only be solved by relying on large-scale long-term energy storage.

"Lithium battery is still the mainstream technology route, but a variety of long-term energy storage technology in the development speed has improved, including flywheel energy storage, gravity energy storage, flow battery and other energy storage technology routes have gradually from the demonstration stage to the scale of the landing stage development. Although these new technologies have not yet been able to match the price of lithium batteries, their prices have been showing a downward trend, attracting independent energy storage power stations or landscape storage projects to choose energy storage systems for 4 hours or more." Chang Ke Ru said.

He Zhuoxin believes that large-scale long-term energy storage technologies such as pumped storage, molten salt energy storage, all-vanadium redox flow batteries, compressed air energy storage, gravity energy storage and hydrogen energy storage are expected to be further developed, and long-term energy storage technologies are expected to show a pattern of competing development of various technical routes.