If the brutal growth of the domestic energy storage industry is not curbed, there may be more serious and far-reaching accidents than Dahongmen.
Recently, the global energy storage power station accidents continue.
According to media PV Magazine on October 30, a 30kWh household battery energy storage system exploded in Lauterbach, Hesse, central Germany.
The accident is the second fire of Tesla Megpack Energy Storage in Australia and one of the many accidents of Tesla Megapack Energy Storage in the world. Because of Tesla's star aura, its accidents have also received more attention.
But in fact, not only Tesla, but also Powin Energy, LG and other head energy storage companies have been involved in energy storage accidents in recent months.
"There are frequent accidents in foreign energy storage stations, and there is a statistic that the proportion is about 1%." Chang Wei, CTO of Lechuang Energy, told Carbon 36.
Compared with foreign countries, there are few lithium battery energy storage safety accidents exposed in China in the past two years, only sporadic video clips of accidents occasionally circulated from the media. Does this mean that the domestic lithium battery energy storage system is safer? Several senior people in the field of energy storage safety told 36 Carbon that there are actually many lithium battery energy storage accidents in China, but there are relatively few investigation reports officially published to the outside world.
"Foreign countries are basically commercial operation projects, almost every day in the call of charging and discharging, product problems can be exposed faster." Qian Zhenhua, chief engineer of prospective energy storage products, told 36 Carbon that with the increasing utilization rate of domestic energy storage projects and the increasing frequency of calls, more and more problems may be exposed in domestic energy storage products.
Domestic energy storage safety problems may gradually emerge
in recent years, overseas lithium battery energy storage systems have been accidents, but also caused a lot of domestic and foreign criticism of the lithium battery energy storage technology route.
Tracing back to the source, electrochemical energy storage, as a technology based on the principle of chemical reaction, is difficult to achieve 100% absolute safety, which is due to the inherent safety shortcomings of lithium battery energy storage. Chang Wei, CTO
of Lechuang Energy, said that frequent fires in energy storage are an inevitable concomitant problem in the promotion of large-scale electrochemical energy storage. "The safety of large-scale energy storage is a system-level safety issue, because more than tens of thousands of single batteries are connected in parallel, which is extremely complex. At the same time, the heating management, PCS and auxiliary systems, etc., can be said that the hidden dangers and defects of any component will lead to the fire or even explosion of the whole energy storage station." He said.
Because of the intrinsic instability of electrochemical energy storage, it is difficult to completely avoid the thermal runaway inside the battery and the system, and it is impossible to achieve absolute safety. Sun Jinhua, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of
China, said at a conference this year that by the end of 2022, there were 772 energy storage power stations above 500kWh in China, 472 of which were in operation, and three fires were publicly reported. The probability of accidents in energy storage power stations was six thousandths per year, and the incidence of fire accidents was still in a relatively high range.
But just as pumped storage power stations are not 100% safe, ensuring the safety of lithium battery energy storage is not to achieve absolute zero accidents.
At present, the general view in the industry is that as long as the probability of energy storage safety accidents is reduced to a certain value, and the direct and indirect losses caused by accidents are within the controllable range, the safety of energy storage can be better guaranteed.
Qian Zhenhua said that the current product safety design ideas of mainstream energy storage manufacturers are based on the existing objective summary and refinement, and the control measures taken to deal with the predicted abnormal state can not avoid the occurrence of safety accidents 100%, but can reduce the probability of accidents as much as possible, so as to avoid the occurrence of accidents. And minimize the consequences of safety incidents.
"At present, the leading energy storage manufacturers in safety adopt the concept of giving priority to prevention and combining prevention with elimination, not only to achieve ontology safety and design safety, but also to pay attention to process safety, cooperate with real-time monitoring and intelligent early warning system, so as to reduce the probability of accidents as much as possible, at the same time, to achieve early detection and treatment of accidents." Finally, the last door of energy storage safety, fire safety, should be built to ensure that the spread of accidents is prevented and the impact is minimized. Qian Zhenhua said.
At present, because the mechanism of energy storage participating in the electricity market is not yet perfect, a large number of energy storage systems are still in the state of "building but not using". According to the survey data of China Electricity Union, by the end of last year, the average equivalent utilization coefficient of domestic electrochemical energy storage projects was 12.2%, and the utilization coefficient of new energy distribution and storage was only 6.
However, this situation will not last forever. With the increasing variety of electricity trading and the continuous improvement of trading policies, domestic energy storage systems will frequently participate in grid response and ancillary services in the future.
Based on this, a number of senior people in the field of energy storage told 36 Carbon that with the increasing number of domestic energy storage projects participating in grid response and ancillary services, more and more problems will be exposed in domestic energy storage products in the future, especially the large-scale energy storage projects on the power side launched under the policy of strong allocation of new energy. This will also be a major challenge for the domestic energy storage market.
Energy storage security is a more severe test
than price war. Globally, the development of new energy storage in Europe and the United States is earlier than that in China, and the total installed capacity of new energy storage in the two markets is much larger than that in China. Energy storage systems also participate in grid response and ancillary services earlier. Therefore, the accidents of foreign energy storage systems from time to time are also a reference and warning for the development of China's energy storage industry.
Especially in the context of the current brutal growth of the energy storage industry, tens of thousands of enterprises are doing energy storage, cross-border players are flocking in, energy storage security technology is easy to be ignored, and the risk of energy storage security is increasing.
In the household storage explosion accident in Lauterbach, Hesse, central Germany, the product is composed of three battery packs produced by Basen Technology Company in Shenzhen, China.
In this context, many energy storage industry insiders and industry experts have publicly expressed their concerns about the safety of energy storage and their appeal for the development of safety norms. In the view of many industry insiders, energy storage security is likely to become the biggest "gray rhino" in the industry.A senior executive of a
leading energy storage company told 36 Carbon that the domestic energy storage market was uneven, and he was very worried that some inexperienced players would produce inferior energy storage products, causing serious accidents, and eventually the entire industrial and commercial energy storage industry would be implicated and its development would be forced to slow down.
In his view, energy storage security is a more severe test than current price war in the industry, which will only affect the industry for a while, but once there are major security problems, the negative impact will last for several years, which is related to the rise and fall of the whole industry.
This concern is not groundless. In 2021, the domestic Dahongmen energy storage fire and explosion accident brought painful lessons to the industry, resulting in the death of two firefighters and the loss of one employee in the power station. After the accident, many industrial and commercial energy storage projects were suspended or suspended, "affecting the industry for several years".
Similar problems have occurred in South Korea. South Korea's energy storage industry-related market has experienced super-high-speed growth, but due to continuous fire accidents, investment enthusiasm for energy storage projects in South Korea has dropped to freezing point, the market is sluggish, and energy storage integrators are forced to seek development space in overseas markets.
"If the brutal growth of the domestic energy storage industry is not controlled, there may be more serious and far-reaching accidents than Dahongmen, which will drag all enterprises into the quagmire." The executive said.
In this context, energy storage system integrators in the head generally pay great attention to energy storage safety and focus on energy storage safety technology. In the process of improving the safety of lithium battery energy storage, energy storage manufacturers have also bred some new business opportunities and technological upgrading paths.
In order to solve the safety problems of traditional lithium iron phosphate batteries, many energy storage system integrators have equipped the system with various comprehensive safety measures, such as energy storage core safety warning algorithm, energy storage AI chip, energy storage temperature control equipment, early safety warning, fire safety and other market segments, thus ushering in development opportunities.
Some energy storage enterprises are also exploring the technology of battery materials. 36 Carbon understands that a number of energy storage manufacturers are currently developing energy storage batteries and system products based on semi-solid lithium-ion batteries. Semi-solid batteries not only have higher energy density, but also higher safety due to the reduced risk of liquid electrolyte leakage and flammability.
As mentioned at the beginning, although these measures can not avoid the occurrence of safety accidents 100%, they can continuously reduce the consequences and probability of safety accidents as much as possible, so as to make energy storage products safer, make the energy storage industry develop healthily and sustainably, truly open up the trillion-level potential market space, and move towards a broader future.
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