Energy storage market competitive moment: to build energy storage special cell product power is the

As the penetration of renewable energy increases, large-scale and high percentage access to the grid makes it increasingly difficult for the power system to meet real-time balance, and also makes energy storage increasingly important.

The essence of energy storage is to translate the wave, solve the absorption, and make the energy more controllable. The use of large-scale energy storage can not only smooth the unstable wind power and photovoltaic power generation and promote the consumption of new energy, but also cooperate with conventional thermal power, nuclear power and other power sources to provide auxiliary services such as peak and frequency regulation for the operation of the power system and improve the flexibility of the power system.

Since 2021, China has issued more than 600 energy-storage policies, laying the foundation for large-scale development of energy storage. According to the statistics of the 14th Five-Year energy planning of all provinces in China, a total of 16 provinces and cities, such as Qinghai and Shanxi, have put forward definite energy storage planning, and a total of 57.8GW of new energy storage installations will be installed by 2025. At the same time, almost all provinces have mandatory requirements on the side distribution and storage of new energy power sources.

Driven by favorable policies, the demand for energy storage systems has soared. Since this year, the energy storage equipment manufacturing industry has become extremely hot. In addition to the active layout of large power generation groups, power grid enterprises and new energy equipment manufacturers, enterprises in other industries are also competing to cross the boundary. According to the data of China Chemical and Physical Power Industry Association, there have been more than 120 investment and financing events in the field of energy storage batteries and materials since 2022, with the investment and financing scale reaching 100 billion yuan, and more than 20 listed companies have made cross-border investment.

Despite the huge incremental potential of energy storage in the future, it will not be easy for the influx of capital to gain a foothold in the space. The increasing number of entrants is bound to create an environment of intense competition, leading to accelerated elimination. The ability to build full stack technology, especially the ability to develop and manufacture special energy storage cell, will become the key for energy storage enterprises to break through the siege. Only by making technological innovation and rapid iteration around the core requirements of energy storage safety, performance, quality and cost performance, can enterprises ensure their sustainable development.

Build a special energy storage cell with safety as the bottom line

Safety is the bottom line of energy storage development, which has attracted much attention from the industry in recent years. According to incomplete statistics, there have been more than 80 energy storage safety accidents in the world in the past five years, and 20 since 2021. In the past two weeks, South Korea and China have had two separate incidents of energy storage fires.

Energy storage security is a systematic project, which requires overall planning and customized design from multiple aspects such as cell, structure, temperature control, fire protection and BMS to meet the requirements of energy storage scenarios.

If the power battery is the heart of the new energy vehicle, there is no doubt that the energy storage battery is also the heart of the energy storage system. Electrochemical materials of batteries play a key role in energy storage safety. Sun Jinhua, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and a member of the European Academy of Sciences, believes that the development and use of non-combustible and non-combustible battery materials is the first line of defense to build a safe battery system.

Vision Power, an industry benchmark, launched its first dedicated energy storage cell in 2019. The company, formerly Nissan Motor's AESC power battery business, was acquired by Vision in 2019 to form Vision Power. Since its acquisition, Vision Power has won international leading car manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Nissan, Renault and Honda, and has more than 4000 core patents worldwide.

In product development, Vision Power continues AESC's safety concept in battery research and design and data accumulation in the field of materials, to carry out a systematic design of battery safety, the first to launch 305Ah energy storage dedicated cell products and mass production, leading the development of the industry.

As for the core material, Vision Power adopts the lithium iron phosphate technology with higher ignition point and better safety, and reduces the side reactions during the use of the core through the specialization of the positive and negative poles. In the structural design, the vision adopts the integrated injection molding structure cover plate with independent intellectual property rights, the structure is highly simplified, the flow ability is strong, to ensure the stability of the whole life cycle structure performance. In addition, the products have passed more than 200 safety tests, including thermal runaway, acupuncture, extrusion, drop and other test content, and obtained the authoritative certification of China, the United States and Japan.

At present, Vision Power has obtained a series of domestic certifications such as IEC62619 UL9540a, including all the safety requirements of JIS C8715-2 certification. Vision is one of only five companies in the world to receive JIS certification, which is required for the Japanese energy storage market.

In manufacturing, Vision Power continues the process control concept of automobile enterprises, to build special energy storage cell production line according to vehicle gauge level standards, to ensure the ultimate safety and excellent quality of energy storage cell.

At the same time, in order to ensure the accurate control of the cell manufacturing process, vision power digital, intelligent penetration into every link. The key parameters of each link are monitored in real time during the production process, such as coating, laser die cutting, high temperature formation, capacity separation and other links of the key process of the battery. Once the product quality problems occur, the equipment will be the first time to alarm, and the problematic cell directly screening processing.

Zhang Yang, the person in charge of the manufacturing center of Vision Power China, introduced that the SPC system (Statistical Process Control, statistical process control, can analyze and solve the production process) used by Vision Power in the production line is different from the industry. "Our SPC system can not only monitor the stability of the cell production process, including foreign matter control, power voltage monitoring and so on. Once the data fluctuates greatly, the system will send an alarm directly to the mobile phone of the quality manager, quality director and other key persons in charge to ensure that the problem can be dealt with in the first time".

Inheriting Vision Power's 15 years of advanced manufacturing experience in the automobile industry, Zhang Yang said, "Our quality control is a little more stringent than the peer requirements. Taking foreign body control as an example, we have achieved 10,000 level control for the electrode segment, and 100,000 level or higher for the other aspects."

Vision Power's digital system not only enables precise production control, but also dramatically increases productivity. For example, learn from the automobile industry's fine process management and efficiency management tool - data decision system, greatly improve the overall efficiency of equipment (OEE).

Standardization and large-scale manufacturing, continuous cost reduction and efficiency

In the energy storage system, the battery cell, as the core, is the most expensive part of the whole, accounting for nearly 70%. Therefore, the cost optimization of the battery cell is very important.

Vision Power's measures to reduce cell costs are standardized production and optimization of industrial layout.

Vision Power has extended the CBB mode of sedimentation in the process of fan manufacturing, which can quickly replicate the production process, improve efficiency and reduce costs. The so-called CBB mode is to change the product process into a modular design and then into standardization. Subdivided into electrode coating section, roll pressing section, winding section and other processes, through a comprehensive and detailed in-depth study of precipitation.

As the production line becomes more mature, high degree of automation can significantly reduce manpower and save costs.

Another measure to reduce cost and increase efficiency is to optimize the industrial layout and form scale. At present, Vista Power Ordos Battery factory is located in Ordos Zero carbon Industrial Park. In the industrial park, the vision builds a relatively independent zero-carbon energy system, which can not only reduce the energy cost, attract the upstream material enterprises of the battery to the production capacity, but also form the battery industrial chain ecology through the industrial cluster, reduce the logistics cost, and improve the reliability of the supply chain.

Vision through the practice in the Ordos factory, will form a global unified standard, form a copy and paste, executable production and manufacturing system. Compared with other domestic battery factories, Vision Power has more than ten years of plant operation experience in Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom, so it has obvious advantages of accelerated overseas layout.

Full stack technical capability

-- Improve security, adapt to scenarios, and satisfy transactions

Battery cell is very important to the safety of energy storage system, but it is not the whole safety of energy storage. Regarding energy storage safety, from the battery core to the entire energy storage system, as well as back-end operation and maintenance management, each link needs to ensure safety to avoid accidents caused by weaknesses.

In order to ensure that every link of energy storage is safe and controllable, more and more energy storage manufacturers are expanding the self-research and self-production chain of energy storage. Starting from the final system integration, they continue to expand upstream to the initial cell, so as to ensure the safety of energy storage system.

Relying on Vision Energy's leading edge in the field of renewable energy, Vision Power's rich experience in battery development and manufacturing, and Vision Intelligence's innovative technology in the field of the Internet of Things, Vision became the first enterprise in the industry to put forward the construction of energy storage full stack technology capability route, namely, cell, BMS, PCS, EMS and other major components of energy storage system independent research and development production.

The construction of full stack technology and production capacity of energy storage core components enables Vision to strictly control safety risks from all technical links of the entire energy storage product chain, including core material formula, core design, electrical safety design, BMS design and fire control pipe network design.

Vision intelligent energy storage products have been delivered to more than 150 scenarios, and the actual operation has exceeded 2 million hours, without a major safety accident.

At the same time, having full stack technology capability also allows vision to be more proactive in technological innovation. For example, in the aspect of battery cell, Vision Power has been in the forefront of the industry in terms of higher voltage and current of the energy storage cell in recent years, and has taken the lead in launching the liquid-cooled energy storage system by learning from the on-board battery technology, which has quickly become the mainstream of the industry. 2021 is also the first full market year for Vision's liquid-cooled energy storage system, which has achieved remarkable results.

Liquid cooled energy storage products are based on the vision of mature container energy storage solutions, the system design concept, fire safety and installation and transportation of a new upgrade. In order to adapt to the geographical diversity of China and meet the energy storage requirements of different scenarios, the product adopts the modular outdoor cabinet design, and can flexibly adjust the topology of the system to adapt to centralized and distributed energy storage applications, match the generation side, grid side and user side scenarios, can cope with high temperature and cold, high humidity, salt spray and other harsh environmental conditions.

In addition, Vision is the only energy storage enterprise in China that has obtained the design requirements of EI120, the highest international standard for heat insulation and fire protection. This standard requires that the cabinet should not leak fire within 120 minutes after the fire in the system container, and the external temperature rise should not exceed 180K, which is far higher than the average level of the industry at home and abroad.

In addition to ensuring safety and quality and meeting technological innovation, the development of full stack technology capability also has a strong boost to product supply and cost optimization. Especially in the face of the current cell supply situation, Vision has its own cell production capacity to ensure the stable supply of energy storage system products.

In the future, with the promotion of independent commercial operation of energy storage power stations, more and more demands will be put forward for special energy storage cells at the stations, such as satisfying high-frequency charge and discharge, and undertaking various requirements of power system such as peak regulation, frequency modulation, reserve and demand response. Meet the longer cycle life, improve the full life cycle of energy storage benefits. This requires energy storage manufacturers to think about the development direction of cell from the perspective of system, and build cell products with car-gauge quality. Only high-quality products that meet the needs of users can be prosperous.

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