the future of electrical energy storage solutions – no lithium supremacy

Co-
Director and partner of energy practice at Ward Howell international, Andreas Fornwald, wrote \"The global electricity storage market is dynamic, urgent and growing at a rate close to gigabit Watts\".
The world is experiencing a surge in intermittent power generation facilities such as renewable energy, but still faces enormous challenges.
Renewable energy facilities, for example, need
Increase backup capacity.
In addition, utilities must balance demand and supply by accumulating unprecedented reserves.
In addition, new rules are being introduced by regulators;
The bidding for energy is becoming more and more complex, and the price of electric energy fluctuates more and more.
In addition to this, grid stability and frequency control are much more complex than in the past.
At present, the performance of lithium batteries is widely publicized.
Due to its good power density and relatively small size, the main application of lithium is mobility.
Big companies like Tesla, LG and BYD see the technology as the best and brightest solution to meet the global power storage needs.
Many people think lithium will become new oil, and some countries, such as China, are heavily subsidizing the industry in order to gain political influence and market share.
However, lithium batteries are not magic batteries. solution-fits-
All energy storage needs.
In fact, lithium has recently experienced a sharp decline in prices and a huge surplus.
Production capacity has been established.
The most important thing driving this downward trend is Tesla, which is building a \"Giga factory\" in Nevada and China, actively planning to increase the manufacture of lithium batteries.
But despite the hype of these key players, the fact is that lithium has many shortcomings compared to mobile batteries and other emerging battery technologies.
The case of Samsung\'s smartphone explosion due to lithium batteries has been widely reported, causing serious safety and reliability problems.
Here are some additional disadvantages of lithium-based batteries: 1.
Low battery life of lithium batteries;
If charged and discharged once a day, the battery life is only two years.
Each lithium battery must be specifically designed for a variety of applications and requirements, such as between power and energy applications: this creates many additional featureson costs3.
There are toxic chemicals, fires and health and safety problems in lithium batteries.
The charging capacity of lithium batteries is reduced by more than 5%;
Less than 80% of the cost is available.
High lithium battery life-
Cycle Cost: up to 7-
Years of life plus expensive recycling after the endof-life6.
In addition to these shortcomings, high insurance premiums and low bank capacity also plague lithium batteries, and supporters of lithium batteries face other major challenges.
For example, the price and power density claimed by lithium manufacturers are actually not important for utility applications.
Discharge cycles and charging curves affect the use of batteries in utilities more than ever before
Scale applications.
The new standard released by PJM power pool supports batteries with longer life cycles-it\'s clear that lithium is not always the best solution.
In fact, a major utility
Lithium batteries will be more than a million times the size of smartphone batteries, so the public\'s view of their feasibility, health and safety risks is largely reasonable.
Flexible natural gas plants can handle both peak power and power grid stability, which poses another threat to lithium batteries of large utility sizes.
At the same time, battery deployment is becoming easier to delegate.
As these two technological trends expand, they are likely to conflict in the competition as well.
Remember that the gas turbine can run for more than 30 years, which is very enlightening;
Unfortunately, no lithium battery can charge and discharge for 30 years every day.
Now we have to consider the huge California effect.
This powerful, populous and prosperous country, as always, stands at the forefront of the energy revolution.
California requires utilities to test batteries by adding more than one.
As of 2020, the power storage capacity was 3 gigawatts.
For example, Edison in Southern California has started trading in energy storage to mitigate the risk of predictable power outages.
All of these projects are scheduled to be completed in record time-
Less than six months.
This is unprecedented in the field of power transmission and power generation.
With all this in mind, many analysts also expect lithium batteries to suffer from-
The price of solar panels will drop sharply over time and scale.
However, there are some notable differences: the main raw materials and components used in solar panels are abundant, and wafer manufacturing of solar panels is easier to scale --
Not as complicated as in battery manufacturing.
In addition, the price of the solar panel industry is relatively stable, and experts do not expect any significant decline in the price;
Now is the competition for efficiency.
In contrast, the cost of recycling batteries is much higher, and the bad speed is faster than the solar panels.
Therefore, copy the price model of Poly
Crystal solar panels will be hard to achieve for lithium batteries.
In addition, the lithium battery market is tightening and integration is underway, which has led to the collapse of many small and medium-sized enterprises, such as Aquion Energy and Imergy in California.
Other players like Yunicos are seeking salvation under the umbrella of a diesel generator supplier.
Therefore, when all economies of scale play a role, the price of lithium batteries may tend to be stable.
Again, it must be noted that prices may rise due to increased short positionsterm demand.
The best future
Many emerging technologies include mobile batteries, Zinc Air, silver-zinc, sodium-
Driven by exciting research conducted by Stanford University, UC Berkeley, MIT and institutions in China and Japan, sulfur, salt water, nickel and zinc and nickel-hydrogen, Korea and Germany.
All in all, the battery is the future, but at present it seems doubtful whether the lithium battery represents the future.
Current research, physics and market forces show that other more efficient and reliable battery types will dominate the market, and the current hype about lithium batteries is a good example
It will soon turn into a more robust and sustainable fashion.