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

This is why zero marginal cost is needed, which is very important both from the efficiency of the entire industry and from the sustainable development of the power industry. What are the four pillars of the future?

1. Photovoltaic power generation. Photovoltaic power generation is an important driver of zero marginal cost energy storage. First of all, its cost will be reduced. In addition, if we use the traditional model, the cost of peak regulation is too high. 2. Electric vehicles are an important source of zero marginal cost energy storage. 3. Energy storage cloud. 4. Blockchain. Energy storage cloud and blockchain are more important for building market infrastructure. This is an important infrastructure for the next generation of energy market, just like Alibaba is building a new infrastructure for Chinese business. So generally speaking, these four links are indispensable.

Photovoltaic power generation is getting closer and closer to the parity range. From the perspective of cost alone, it is competing with traditional energy. This is the report of the US EIA. The upper part is dispatchable energy, and the lower part is non-dispatched energy. Photovoltaic and wind power have already competed with traditional power sources. Therefore, they predict that the two fastest growing energy sources in the future will be renewable energy and natural gas power generation, while coal and nuclear power will decline. As can be seen below, wind power will basically grow steadily in the future, but the entire solar PV will grow rapidly. Last year, distributed photovoltaic power generation in our country was very fast. We can see China in the next five years. The problem brought by the entire photovoltaic industry is that many of them are now nighttime peak-shaving problems, which will become daytime peak-shaving problems. In the absence of energy storage, we can see that the belly of the duck curve will go further down. If you want to push up the peak at night, it means that the ability and capacity of gas technology must be further strengthened, and it should be said that the cost of the entire system will increase further. In the case of zero marginal cost energy storage, the future will bring another option, that is, distributed photovoltaics on the load side are not used for use, but for storage. Centralized photovoltaics are used during the day, and distributed photovoltaics during the day are used at night. Only in this case can our future fossil energy and gas energy units be phased out, otherwise the system will always be in need, even if the time required is very short.

According to EIA's forecast, the demand for energy storage at the entire grid level will grow fastest from 2020 to 2030. Unfortunately, the EIA report does not show its impact on users' own energy storage. However, we currently believe that distributed small-scale energy storage on the load side will be able to develop further.

I just mentioned the impact on the load side, and the longer-term impact is on the power generation side. The impact on the power generation side is very similar to the principle just mentioned. Now, when we build centralized wind power and photovoltaic power, we need to bundle the solar (wind) and thermal power, and use the transmission line to send it out. This is a very unreasonable model. The environmental protection benefit is very limited, because the thermal power units, wind power and photovoltaic power are built for environmental protection, but they still need to be equipped with thermal power units. If they are not equipped, this transmission line will only be used for a period of time, and the cost is too high. In the future, we can realize the delivery of pure solar (wind) energy storage, so that the utilization rate of the line can compete with conventional units. In the future, the capacity of wind (solar) may not match the transmission line, but the capacity will exceed the capacity of the entire transmission line, and the excess capacity will be stored. The core economic concept is that we must first cancel the bundled thermal power because the economic efficiency is too low. If the cost is further reduced, it can replace the delivery of conventional thermal power and hydropower. This evolution path is the direction that the power generation side should focus on in the future. The prerequisite is that the marginal cost of energy storage must be low enough, lower than the price difference of the energy of the unit in the wholesale market, which is a very high requirement.

We will need a very cheap energy storage source in the future, and there is such a source, which is electric vehicles. First of all, you can see that electric vehicles are growing rapidly. With such growth momentum, we think that they can catch up with the needs of energy storage power systems in the future. By 2030, there will be 600 to 100 million vehicles, which is a very large growth in volume. This will bring huge energy storage potential. This is the research done by the National Development and Reform Commission. The entire peak regulation will reach a power regulation capacity of tens of millions of kilowatts in 2017 and a regulation capacity of hundreds of millions of kilowatts by 2030. The entire maximum load may be at the level of about 900 to 1 billion. This regulation capacity is very high and can match the demand we just mentioned very well.

Why is it the lowest cost source? Because users pay for the battery when they buy the car. If I use the battery for energy storage services, I don't need to pay more extra costs, including the supporting charging facilities that have been invested in one time before. Another important thing is that for the main group of electric vehicles in the future, private cars, the total daily electricity consumption is very low. That is to say, the capacity of the battery in the whole car in the future, if it only meets the daily driving needs of a private car user, the entire capacity will only account for a small proportion of the entire life cycle capacity. In 2030, an 80 kWh car, that is, a car with a range of 400 to 500 kilometers, will only consume 40,000 kWh of electricity in about 10 years, and there will be 120,000 kWh of idle electricity. Add the proportion of parking time and driving time, and the parking time is higher than the driving time. This energy can be charged in an orderly manner, which is a downward regulation. The next step is to discharge to the power grid, which can achieve upward regulation. Finally, there is cascade utilization. The cascade utilization solves the problem that the battery can only be used at home or in places with charging piles in the car, and is still limited in space. If the cascade utilization is used, the battery can be withdrawn and sent to the power generation end or the power grid end for many system-level applications, which is much cheaper than using new batteries.

Energy storage cloud, more importantly, is to build a hierarchical, zoned, coordinated and unified market platform and trading mechanism. I want to emphasize one point here. We just mentioned blockchain and energy storage cloud, but what we overlooked is that a transaction of electricity is inseparable from the physical grid of the load. For example, if a place needs to cut load and stop the factory, it can buy energy storage, but it can only buy energy storage under the table to solve the transformer problem. It cannot skip a table and buy other people's energy storage on a cloud. That storage can't solve his problem. In the future, the entire power market energy storage trading market cannot be separated from the physical power grid. It must be closely related to the market mechanism of the physical power grid. It must have the characteristics of the division and grading of the power grid. State Grid Electric Vehicle Company is very happy to see that it has proposed the strategy of energy storage cloud. We understand that this strategy is of great significance to the formation of the entire Chinese energy storage market, including that it is the biggest beneficiary, the largest potential buyer in the future, and the main body of the power market reform. It has its unique advantages in promoting pilot projects and institutional mechanism breakthroughs.

There is nothing new about blockchain. Many technologies are ready-made. What is more important is that these technologies are integrated in the current way for the first time, especially in the consensus mechanism. We think that we should not be too mythical about blockchain, nor should we be too optimistic that blockchain can solve all problems. We just mentioned that the traditional centralized model has good advantages, including its fast speed, high reliability, and security is not necessarily lower than blockchain. Blockchain has advantages in security. Security on blockchain has its own advantages and disadvantages. Blockchain has three different forms, which will not be elaborated here. But we think that from the perspective of market construction at the power grid level and regional level, it must be a way of alliance chain, because only it can inherit the advantages of centralization and integrate the concept of blockchain well. Public chain and private chain are more about solving terminal problems and smaller local problems. It can reduce costs a lot, but this cost is not brought by the technology itself. Technology just provides us with a choice. In fact, the centralized approach can also reduce credit costs, management costs, and transaction costs. In many cases, it is not that the centralized approach cannot be transparent and open, but that the middle subjects are unwilling to be open and transparent. The emergence of blockchain technology will make everyone chase and pay attention. Everyone does not want to fall behind, and it will bring new impetus. Once this technology is used, it must be open and transparent, which will bring about the reduction of trust costs, management costs, and transaction costs. As we all know, as a company, the biggest headache is that you cannot get enough information to make the decision you want. Through the setting of reasonable access rights, any participating subject can make scientific decisions. This is very critical and reduces the waste of a lot of social resources.