Looking at the global battery energy storage market, the UK continues to maintain a strong development momentum, leading the world; the United States, Australia, and South Korea have all implemented 100 MW level energy storage projects; various commercial storage demonstration projects have emerged in Europe, Japan, India, the Middle East, and other regions.
Internally, in the power structure system, coal consumption accounts for more than 60%, improving the energy structure and actively developing new energy and clean green energy are undoubtedly urgent tasks. Wind energy and solar energy are the absolute main forces in new energy generation, but they have characteristics such as high volatility and difficulty in prediction. However, battery energy storage has the characteristics of fast scheduling response, flexible configuration, precise control, and environmental friendliness, making it the best partner for new energy generation. This is already an industry consensus and has been recognized by relevant national departments.
Although gas-fired power generation and pumped storage power stations can also perform some new energy peak shaving work, their smoothing output and frequency control effects are far inferior to battery energy storage. Although wind and solar power generation concentrated in the same location can naturally balance some output fluctuations (such as the wind-solar complementarity effect), there are moments when there is no wind and no sunlight that can occur from time to time. Therefore, a certain-scale battery energy storage power station is the ultimate choice for new energy power stations to achieve tracking plan generation. There are various forms of energy storage power stations that are compatible with new energy generation, such as combined wind and photovoltaic storage, wind and solar combined storage, etc. Considering the comprehensive aspects such as usage effect, utilization efficiency, convenient scheduling, and business models, independent energy storage power stations with a capacity of more than 100 MW will occupy the mainstream position.
Battery energy storage not only has economic value but also has social value (various values other than economic value). From certain perspectives, its social value far exceeds its economic value, such as its military value, power security value, energy strategic value, etc. Only in terms of economic value, it mainly depends on its scale and usage scenarios. For example, portable chargers can only solve the problem of mobile phone users for one or two days; household energy storage or backup emergency energy sources can only solve partial electricity consumption or temporary power outage problems for individual households; user-side energy storage usually only considers using peak-valley electricity price differences and demand-side response.
In comparison, large-scale energy storage has huge social value due to its fast response speed, precise control, and bi-directional adjustment characteristics. For example, it can be used for grid dispatching in areas such as frequency and peak regulation, which has huge social value, and the return is also rich (mainly in terms of frequency regulation service fees, capacity service fees, etc.), but the premise is to have an open power market (including auxiliary power service market).
Although energy storage technology is used in new energy microgrids, distributed photovoltaic power generation, and user-side peak shaving (peak shaving and valley filling), the large-scale application area for battery energy storage will be in the grid-side transmission and distribution. Independent battery energy storage power stations with a capacity of over 100 MW that can be directly dispatched by the grid can not only ensure the power supply security of the grid but also improve the power quality in local areas. Battery energy storage may even subvert traditional power grid design concepts and design rules, improve equipment utilization, reduce resource wastage, and extend the construction cycle of capacity expansion. With the gradual opening of future power markets, spot trading of electricity and auxiliary power service markets will undoubtedly give birth to a large number of energy storage power stations.
