Since the beginning of this year, Fujian, Hubei, Shandong, Inner Mongolia and other provinces have successively issued 2020 wind power and photovoltaic power generation construction plans and declaration requirements, all expressly encouraging new energy power stations to configure energy storage, and proposed priority support for new energy power generation projects with energy storage. This makes “new energy + energy storage” a hot topic of discussion in the industry.
According to industry insiders, words such as “encouragement” and “priority” frequently appear in local policy documents, reflecting to a certain extent that “new energy + energy storage” may become a standard in the new energy industry.

“New energy + energy storage” is the development trend

On June 30, the Fujian Regulatory Office of the National Energy Administration formally issued the “Fujian Province Electric Power Peak-shaving Auxiliary Service Transaction Rules (Trial) (Revised in 2020)”. In terms of electricity storage participating in peak-shaving auxiliary services, the The energy storage scale is not less than 10MW/40MWh. The document encourages power generation companies, power sales companies, power users, and power storage companies to invest in the construction of power storage facilities.

On June 8, the Hubei Provincial Energy Administration issued the “Notice on Carrying out the Evaluation of Wind Power and Evaluation of the Competitive Allocation of Photovoltaic Power Generation Projects in 2020”, which proposed that priority should be given to the integration of wind storage. For multiple wind power and photovoltaic power generation projects to be connected to the same substation or the same consumer station area, priority will be given to wind storage and wind-solar complementary projects. The energy storage capacity of the wind storage project shall not be less than 10% of the configured capacity of the wind power project, and it must be completed and put into production at the same time as the wind power project to meet the energy storage requirements.

According to incomplete statistics, more than 10 provinces and regions, including Fujian, Hubei, Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Henan and Anhui, have issued similar notices or documents. New energy power station configuration energy storage is becoming the standard configuration of local new energy project development.

“The integration of new energy and energy storage is the future development direction.” Ding Wenlei, chairman of Shandong Hangyu Energy Co., Ltd., said that the local policy of allocating energy storage for new energy power stations is to solve the problem of new energy consumption. “Energy storage has the natural advantage of peak shaving, which can effectively solve the impact of intermittent new energy directly connected to the grid.”.

“The combination of new energy and energy storage is an inevitable trend.” Chen Zhi, general manager of the energy storage sales center of the optical storage division of sunshine power supply Co., Ltd., he also believes that the allocation of energy storage in new energy power stations can improve the stability of power system and promote power consumption.
Chen Zhi also said that this will generate market demand and drive the development of energy storage industry. “In order to ensure the grid connection of the project on schedule, new energy enterprises will configure energy storage system.”.

In this context, China’s installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage is expected to usher in a new round of growth this year. It is reported that the bidding scale of new energy distribution and storage projects released in the first half of 2020 alone has reached 58.6% of the total new electrochemical energy storage put into operation last year. It is estimated that the annual installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage in China will exceed 1 gigawatt this year.

Economy needs to be considered

Chen Zhi said that encouraging and giving priority to supporting the development of “new energy + energy storage” will drive the development of energy storage market, but will increase the investment cost of new energy projects. At the same time, the development of energy storage market is slow, and the cost is still high. “It’s also a burden for investors.”.

Chen Zhi also believes that in order to achieve grid connection on schedule, new energy station investment enterprises may try to choose low-cost energy storage systems. “This will lead to fierce price competition in the energy storage market, and even the situation of” bad money driving out good money “.

“From the point of view of the new energy development project allocation document, if the new energy storage project is not required to be issued, it will be a priority for the development enterprises.” Ding Wenlei also said that at present, new energy power generation is in the critical period of charging for affordable access to the Internet, and the allocation of energy storage will increase the capital investment of new energy development enterprises to a certain extent, bringing a lot of pressure.

In addition, Chen Zhi also stated that “how to use energy storage and how to evaluate”, that is, the evaluation system and application methods of energy storage, the policies issued by various localities did not give an answer. In addition, the national standard is missing, “Now the national recommended standard is used, but the standard must be combined with the actual application scenario of energy storage. For example, according to the current recommended standards for lithium-ion electronics, it is impossible to distinguish between power batteries and energy storage batteries. “.

It is worth mentioning that for the energy storage system of new energy power station, how to distribute the income of the energy storage system? According to the relevant person in charge of China Photovoltaic Industry Association, from the current market situation, the biggest bottleneck of “new energy + energy storage” lies in its lack of stable and universally applicable profit model, which leads to its unstable economy and inability to give full play to enterprise initiative.

Ding Wenlei believes that the current supporting policies for the integrated development of energy storage and new energy are not perfect, and the existing peak shaving support policies are difficult to support the investment benefit of energy storage system.

“The distribution of energy storage income is really a big problem.” Chen Zhi also said that if the centralized installation, according to the principle, who benefits who pays, but there is no clear policy to support.

Need policy support

Energy storage is the development trend of new energy power station, but its economy needs to be considered, so how to develop “new energy + energy storage” in the future? Industry insiders said that supporting policies need to be established and improved.

“To promote the development of” new energy + energy storage “, the key lies in the formulation and improvement of relevant supporting policies.” Chen Zhi believes that it is necessary to build and improve the market mechanism of electric power auxiliary service, give energy storage “legal” market subject status, and let it participate in peak load regulation and frequency regulation auxiliary service market to obtain benefits. Before the auxiliary service market mechanism is established, it is necessary to establish the evaluation system and use specification of “new energy + energy storage” project to guide the healthy development of new energy power station configuration and energy storage.

Ding Wenlei also said that relevant national departments need to issue corresponding supporting policies to support the allocation of energy storage for new energy power stations, such as price compensation policies, fiscal and tax policies, and subsidy policies, so as to improve the economy of the project. “Before the introduction of supporting policies, further formulate and clarify the technical access standards of energy storage system, avoid the use of low price energy storage system by new energy development enterprises, and ensure the safe and reliable application of energy storage system.”.