In the critical period of a new round of knockout rounds for energy storage, how to find differentiated competitive advantages is becoming the key to the survival of enterprises.

Since the beginning of this year, major energy storage companies have gathered together to release new energy storage products with larger capacity, higher energy density, and longer life. The mainstream battery capacity in the market has moved from 280Ah last year to 300Ah+, and even iterates towards a larger capacity. In the same 20-foot container, the energy storage system capacity has been upgraded from 5MWh to 5.5 MWh and 6.9 MWh for better performance, less floor space, and lower costs.

It is worth noting that in the fierce market competition, the "bigger" of battery cells and system capacity has become the same starting point for new products from various companies. Not only that, products on the market have shown convergence in terms of design, performance characteristics, marketing selling points, and even the direction of technological evolution, and the risk of homogenization has become increasingly prominent. In the critical period of a new round of knockout rounds for energy storage, how to find differentiated competitive advantages is becoming the key to the survival of enterprises.

Convergence of technological evolution directions

As the scale of individual energy storage projects in China shifts from the MWh era to the GWh era, large-capacity batteries are considered to be a major direction for industry upgrading and development. Entering 2024, the large-scale implementation and application of 300Ah+ large-capacity energy storage cells will accelerate. At the same time, battery cell products and energy storage systems will show a trend of "blooming flowers". Leading companies in the industry have released 500Ah+ ultra-large capacity energy storage cells with different specifications. In the system field, the 5MWh level system has not yet been used on a large scale, and the 6MWh + system has followed one after another. Nearly 10 companies including BYD, Honeycomb Energy, and Ruipu Lanjun have successively launched 6MWh + energy storage systems.

As the capacity and power of energy storage systems become larger and larger, due to safety considerations, heat dissipation methods have also become a key consideration in system design. The cooling technology of new products from mainstream companies has also switched from previous air-cooling technology to liquid-cooling technology. In addition, under the background of Xizang, Xinjiang and other places proposing to encourage or force new energy projects to allocate grid-based energy storage, grid-based energy storage technology has also become a hot area for companies to compete in deployment.

“Currently, energy storage products are rapidly iterating in a half-year cycle, but overall, the products are highly homogeneous. 。”业内人士称，技术创新要谨慎，如果容量扩大走得太快，很多标准不支持，存在一定安全风险，产业链、供应链、工艺工装也不支持。

Zheng Hua, a professor at North China Electric Power University, pointed out to the reporter of China Energy News that on the one hand, the speed of technology iteration, personnel mobility, and manufacturing technology upgrades has been greatly accelerated, and the gap between the manufacturing processes and marketing methods of various leading manufacturers is getting smaller and smaller; On the other hand, the criteria for judging "good or bad" energy storage are not perfect or even missing. The problem of "building but not using" has resulted in the use or commercial value of energy storage not being effectively verified and exerted. This will lead to the problem of bad money driving out good money, causing huge investment waste, and causing harm to the high-quality development of the energy storage industry.

market competition is further intensified

In recent years, the new energy storage industry has developed vigorously and has become one of the most concerned hot spots. Sky Eye data shows that currently, there are more than 100,000 companies in the energy storage field, and the number of newly registered energy storage related companies reaches tens of thousands within a year. Listed companies including food, liquor, real estate, toys, and ceramics have also crossed the border. Energy storage. The technical threshold for energy storage systems is not high. Many cross-border enterprises have insufficient technology accumulation, vague product positioning, lack of channel resources. In addition, energy storage equipment is built but not used. Investors pursue low-cost allocation of storage to reduce costs, which brings similar products to the soil for growth.

Zhang Jianhui, chairman of Haibostronic, believes that the reason for the homogenization of energy storage products is that in the equipment R & D and manufacturing process, only simple hardware stacking is considered from the supply side perspective, and there is a lack of closed-loop data management for the entire chain. Equipment manufacturers lack effective feedback on on-site operation data, and investors and operators lack modeling of front-end systems. Equipment research and development and manufacturing are an open-loop system, and data is completely separated.

** The direct consequence of product homogenization is to intensify price reduction competition among companies **. In the past year, the price of energy storage cells has dropped by more than half, from 0.9 yuan/Wh to less than 0.4 yuan/Wh, and the average price of energy storage systems has dropped from 1.3 yuan/Wh to about 0.7 yuan/Wh, which has fallen below the cost of some enterprise products. Line, and prices continue to decline.

Judging from the newly disclosed annual performance reports of listed energy storage companies in 2023, although the performance of some companies has shown high growth, revenue and profits have both dropped, or increased income without increasing profits. This is also consistent with the rapid downward trend in the prices of energy storage systems and energy storage batteries, and companies are sinking deeper and deeper in the whirlpool of price competition.

Research institute Institute of Advanced Engineering Industry analyzed that in 2024, the overall supply of China's new energy storage market will exceed demand, and the competition in the energy storage system integration process will be more cruel than that in the battery core process. More than 50% of energy storage system companies (including large storage systems, industrial and commercial storage systems, household storage systems and other enterprises) will be eliminated.

Will ultimately be tested by the market

"The energy storage cells of each merchant look the same at large, but there are differences when looking at it carefully. The indicators are similar but different, but there is no essential difference in the use of users." Zheng Hua pointed out that homogenization is not the same as standardization, but it is often a prelude to standardization, technological breakthroughs or the breaking of new concepts. Therefore, homogenization is not necessarily a bad thing, especially for consumers or users, who purchase higher-performance products at a lower cost under the premise of safety. Goods are produced for use, and sustained innovation is the key "weapon" for enterprises to remain invincible in homogeneous competition.

业内人士同样指出，同质化是储能产品竞争的表象，实际上，电芯良率、循环次数、固定成本等方面，每家企业的技术创新和数据表现并不相同。 As energy storage is really used and more frequently participates in power grid dispatch, the true performance of products will be tested by the market.。

"As digital intelligence technology continues to improve and product iteration accelerates, homogeneous competition has no future." Liu Yong, secretary-general of the Energy Storage Application Branch of the China Chemical and Physical Power Supply Industry Association, pointed out to the reporter of China Energy News that in the current fierce market competition, companies ultimately rely on cost-effective products, leading technologies, and rich domestic and foreign channel resources and high-quality services. The energy storage industry must carry out healthy competition and empower each other. Leading companies should play a leading and aggregation effect, pioneer and innovate, and lead upstream and downstream industrial chains to jointly create cost-effective products that meet the real needs of the market.

"The industry urgently needs to introduce a series of access standards to build the 'moat' higher." Sun Wei, president of Tianhe Energy Storage, shared his competitive thinking that all products must correspond to market segments. Our approach is to make the underlying hardware products as unified as possible, reduce product classifications and types, achieve large-scale production, and reduce costs. In terms of configuration, especially the intelligent configuration of some software, it is continuously developed according to user needs and becomes an add-on item or option in the future to achieve the maximum economic value of each segment scenario.