Li Lili: The evolution path of the "zero marginal cost" energy storage market based on electric vehicles, energy storage cloud and blockchain

China Energy Storage Network News : From May 19th to 21st, the "8th China International Energy Storage Conference" was grandly held in Shenzhen. More than 1,500 representatives from government agencies, research institutes, industry organizations, power companies, new energy project units, system integrators and other countries and regions from China, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Australia and other countries and regions attended the conference.

Li Lili, a distinguished researcher at the Sichuan Energy Internet Research Institute of Tsinghua University, delivered a wonderful speech entitled "The Evolution Path of the "Zero Marginal Cost" Energy Storage Market Based on Electric Vehicles, Energy Storage Cloud and Blockchain" at the Energy Blockchain & Cloud Energy Storage Special Session.

The speech is as follows :

Li Lili : I am very happy to have this opportunity today to communicate with you about cutting-edge topics at the invitation of the organizer. I previously worked in the State Grid Corporation of China's think tank, the State Grid Energy Research Institute, for 8 years, mainly doing strategic and policy research. Later, I went to an investment institution and worked there for about a year. Now I have started my own business and am also a part-time distinguished researcher at Tsinghua University. So this year, I have cooperated with Tsinghua University to work on some thinking and research on the energy storage industry, and I would like to take this opportunity to share with you.

This topic was largely inspired by Chairman Jiang of State Grid Electric Vehicle Company. He mentioned the concept of zero marginal cost. This concept was actually mentioned in a new book written by the author of The Third Industrial Revolution, The Concept of Zero Marginal Cost Society. How will our society in the future maximize the existing stock of resources to achieve sharing by the whole society? This inspiration has made us realize that the application of energy storage will also go in this direction in 10-15 years, and it also needs pillar support. Such an industry may be very different from what we are discussing in several forums next door, such as the market for energy storage power stations and peak and frequency regulation, but we hope that today's thinking can help you understand this industry from the perspective of 5-10 years, the short-term and medium-term 10-20 years.

Today we will talk about three directions: First, zero marginal cost energy storage is very important. The core is that this cost must be very low to meet the needs of self-purification and sustainable development of the entire power system in the future. Second, what are the four key supporting factors needed for the future zero marginal cost energy storage market. We think these factors are the outlines and may be the content that everyone needs to focus on. Some may be in the near future, and some are more mid- to long-term. Third, the evolution path of the zero marginal cost energy storage market. It should be said that it is difficult to propose a future path. Our entire research should be in a relatively preliminary stage from the introduction just now. We are now cooperating with State Grid Corporation and other relevant units that have implemented the practice, including local distribution companies, to discuss how to cut in step by step. So this should be our preliminary research results. There are many shortcomings. Please criticize and correct me.

How do you understand energy storage? What people lack is the understanding of the essential laws of energy storage. Many people either work on power systems and talk about them from the perspective of power systems, or mention blockchain and cloud energy storage, which have nothing to do with power systems. These two things should be discussed together. From the essence, we think that energy storage cannot escape the essence of the storage or warehousing industry. We have also done analog research and think it is still interesting. The two most important warehousing now actually happen in two areas in the real world: one is commodity warehousing, which is the express logistics we see now. In fact, we believe that the role and regularity of warehousing in commodity warehousing will definitely be reflected in power storage in the future. The second is data storage, which is different from commodity storage. Data storage combined with big data will also generate potential value in the future, which is different from commodity storage. We can see that whether it is commodity flow storage or data flow storage, it should be said that there are some evolutionary laws. We believe that these laws are what we should pay attention to when discussing power storage in the future.

Today's topic is "Cloud Energy Storage and Blockchain". In fact, the application of blockchain will be considered in the traceability of manufacturing commodity flows in the future. Many changes have taken place before the emergence of blockchain, such as the evolution from manual to automated, and from informationization to intelligentization. As you know, SF Express also does intelligent cloud warehouses, which is actually evolving from a dedicated approach to an open and shared approach in the future. Professor Zhang also mentioned the concept of cloud energy storage, which is very similar. In addition, we also see changes in data flow. More importantly, the cost of data flow has been declining according to Moore's Law, so it is getting cheaper and cheaper. There are already corresponding signs in batteries. From the earliest action of Alibaba to get rid of IOE, in fact, the entire dedicated software and centralized servers have been transformed into distributed and open source systems. This is a very important trend in the future changes in energy storage systems. Another very important thing is that the entire data flow has developed from an independent entity to a virtualized hybrid cloud platform. We cannot simply mention the cloud, the changes in the public cloud and private cloud of users. In the future, we are talking about the combination of public energy storage and dedicated energy storage. It is very important that these two industries have a great inspiration for power energy storage. Initially, we think it will be closer to the characteristics of commodity logistics. In fact, electricity is to be delivered and stored. I use electricity. If there is energy storage, it is an ordinary commodity. However, it is very different from the current express delivery. Express delivery cannot achieve the speed of light transmission and allocation. As we all know, the transmission and allocation of electricity occurs in real time. The power grid itself already has a huge network and the Internet is comparable in speed and coverage. In this regard, it has the characteristics of data storage. In the future, power storage will be an organic combination of the storage direction of data flow and the storage direction of commodity flow.

Back to the essence of warehousing, we find that cost is actually the most critical factor. Without the decline in memory and hard disk storage under Moore's Law, big data and cloud computing would not have happened. Without the changes in the warehousing revolution brought about by private enterprises such as JD.com and SF Express, there would not be such convenient e-commerce and low-cost logistics experience as we know it today. Cost reduction is very important. The goal of warehousing is that these two pictures are its essential laws. The horizontal axis shows that as warehousing increases, the cost of the entire system will go down. The above picture shows that as warehousing increases, the cost of transportation goes down, the cost of warehousing itself goes up, and the cost of inventory increases a little. This is the characteristic of commodity logistics. The final result is the picture below. The more warehousing you have, the shorter the time it takes to respond to user services, and the better the user experience. However, the cost will decrease with the increase of facilities. If the facilities reach the critical point, the cost of the entire system will increase, and energy storage also has the market space and market share of the optimal configuration in the system.

How big is the market? Before that, there is another question. If you can only build one warehouse, where should it be built? I think this is the lack of direction in the application of energy storage. We are now talking about energy storage on the power generation side, energy storage participating in system auxiliary services, and energy storage on the user side. It seems that every market can do it. If we consider this issue from the perspective of the system, when your resources are limited, we will put aside the interests of the real world. In fact, there is an optimal choice. This is our preliminary research result, which may not be correct. We now judge that for an electric power system, in fact, from the perspective of investment and operation, it is probably power generation, there will be a hub substation at the sending end, and finally to the load assets. The value of energy storage in the future is to reduce the cost of the entire system. Which investment has the greatest value? If it is built on the power generation asset side, it will play a greater role in reducing the demand for effective installed capacity of power generation, which is the greatest cost saving. From the perspective of the energy storage cloud, the sending end can realize the energy storage capacity of multiple power plants to share the energy storage capacity, but it has more benefits and can also reduce the capacity of this transmission line. If energy storage power stations are built at the receiving end, the cost of transmission lines can actually be reduced. Then, energy storage can be built at the load end. In fact, this impact will bring benefits to all front-end links. In fact, from a system perspective, energy storage at the user end will generate the greatest benefits, which can reduce power generation costs, main grid costs, and load costs.