"Next year, more than 80% of the companies that do energy storage may die, or at least hibernate."
A person in charge of an international new energy company, a few days ago in the exchange with the observer network company channel on the energy storage market made such a judgment, he further said that according to the new energy storage installed scale and the bid ** simple calculation can be seen, the overall scale of the market is currently about 100 billion yuan, in addition to Huawei, Sungrow and other leading enterprises, the rest of the cake "may be able to support the survival of this industry that is 200 companies, but now the number of registered energy storage companies has reached more than 100,000. ”
The observer network also found that the industrial and commercial registration information was also foundAt present, the total number of energy storage enterprises in operation in China has reached 1590,000Among them, 68,516 new enterprises will be established in 2023, and the cumulative number of newly established enterprises since January 2022 will reach 1060,000, which means that two-thirds of the market players have poured into the energy storage track in the past year or so, compared to the absolute growth rate of the energy storage market, although it is also rapid, it still dwarfs.
It is necessary to emphasize that so many new players in the energy storage market are not evenly distributed in the subdivision directions such as pumped storage and flow batteries, but are concentrated in the short-term energy storage solution of lithium-ion batteries, which further highlights the local supply-demand imbalance of new energy storage.
According to statistics from Infolink and other domestic and foreign institutions, the global energy storage cell shipment scale in the first three quarters of 2023 will be about 1438GWh, of which 122 for large and household storage2GWh with 216GWh, from the quarterly performance, the third quarter quarter-on-quarter growth was only 9%, the previous industry expectation of energy storage installation tide has been disappointed, and the fourth quarter is expected to be "only" about 13% quarter-on-quarter growth, the annual energy storage cell shipment is estimated from 210GWh slightly revised down to 203GWh. As a core market, China, in the third quarter, due to the decline in external demand and the wait-and-see of end users, the shipment scale has seen a 10% quarter-on-quarter decline.
The imbalance between the supply side and the demand side has given birth to a series of market "strange status quo" such as the circle of friends issuing a contract to be dug up the foot of the wall, and bidding for hundreds of companies in a bidding, and the winning bid for energy storage has also continued to decline, and the bid price in the 2-hour and 4-hour energy storage system has fallen below 1 yuan wh in November, and the average market price of energy storage cells has fallen below 0The 5 yuan wh mark, which further caused end users to postpone the bidding and wait, exacerbated the mutual feedback of the imbalance between supply and demand.
It is no wonder that the supply and demand sides of the energy storage market seem to be in the northern and southern hemispheres, and the integration of wind, solar and storage on the demand side is in full swing, and the supply side is rolling out a cold winter, and a squid game between energy storage manufacturers has just kicked off in this winter
Wu Hui, director of the Battery 100 Association and president of the China Battery Industry Research Institute, said in an interview with the observer network that first of all, from the perspective of the industrial life cycle, the energy storage industry can be compared to the new energy vehicle industry a few years ago to a certain extent. Since last year, a lot of money has been released in large savings, including household savings, so I think the process of rapid industrialization will continue in the future." However, Wu Hui also pointed out that the new electrochemical energy storage is not an isolated market, and the energy storage cells and power cells have quite obvious versatility, "so you have to look at these two industries together, because many production lines that do power batteries are also doing energy storage, of course, there are also some companies that specialize in positioning energy storage cells."
Based on such inter-market connections, not only the head manufacturers of power batteries are willing to expand their layout in the field of energy storage, strengthen market collaboration and economies of scale, more second- and third-tier power battery manufacturers that have been unable to achieve loading are also regarded as life-saving straws, in the case of the collective influx of power battery manufacturers into the energy storage market, the energy storage industry pattern is far from entering the solidification stage, and the market concentration can also be directly out, the top five manufacturers of energy storage batteries in the first three quarters of 2023 (CATL, BYD, EVE Lithium Energy, Ruipu Lanjun and Xiamen Haichen) CR5 is about 728%, which is significantly lower than the power battery market.
Looking forward to the energy storage market in 2024, the overall trend of demand is still clear, and the industry consensus that the shipment scale of energy storage batteries will exceed the TWH mark around 2030 has not been loosened, but even if the market compound annualized growth rate (CAGR) can be maintained at the level of 30% or even 40%, I am afraid it is still not enough to digest the existing lithium battery capacity planning, according to the statistics of a well-known battery material company, the global lithium-ion battery built, under construction and planned production capacity accumulation in 2023 has reached 469TWh, which is equivalent to 1 of the total demand for lithium batteries in 20302 times, of which only Chinese enterprises have built production capacity of 14twh。
Wu Hui also pointed out to the observer network that the imbalance between supply and demand in the field of energy storage will continue for a long time, "the demand is actually judged by everyone more accurately, like grid-level large storage, including China, the United States, Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, there will be a very large demand, this is visible, like Europe, including Australia, The home energy storage market in these places in Japan also exists, so the demand is no problem, but everyone sees this demand, giving a higher expectation, so that the oversupply does appear soon, comprehensive power and energy storage batteries, if it is said that the planned production capacity is built, it will be a surplus situation for a long time in the future, of course, the system integration is due to the asset-light operation, as long as there is a market it will quickly form a supply, and there is no market can also disappear quickly. ”
In the case that the domestic market has become a "red ocean", the United States and other overseas markets are generally pinned on high hopes by energy storage manufacturers, relying on the cost control ability and product iteration efficiency of China's first chain, from system integrators to battery cell manufacturing enterprises have many successful cases of going to sea, according to the monitoring of overseas institutions, in 2022, among lithium battery energy storage system integrators, Sungrow has become the world's largest market share of enterprises. Canadian Solar and other companies with channel capabilities have performed particularly well in the North American market, as for the European market, BYD's share has reached 17% that year, and Fluence and Nidec are only "one step away", after the release of the 2023 data, it is fully expected that Chinese manufacturers will bring more surprises.
However, Wu Hui also reminded that the non-commercial risks of the U.S. market need to be paid attention to, "The U.S. energy storage market space is definitely very large, second only to the Chinese market, especially in the energy storage area, but I think that overseas, especially now that the U.S. inflation reduction bill has some restrictions on Chinese companies, I think there are still great challenges here", at the same time, the current energy storage companies often announce multi-year huge contracts in the North American market, there are also policy risks," If the conditions of these intentional agreements of domestic enterprises overseas change, they may not necessarily be implemented, such as the impact of policies, if you can't get subsidies, then sure overseas energy storage projects will not use domestic batteries, and if the market environment changes, such as the growth of battery manufacturers in the United States, it may also change, so this kind of long-term intentional orders, it should be said that there is not much constraint on both parties. ”
It is worth mentioning that there are still a variety of technical routes for new energy storage on the grid side that are competing, especially in the U.S. market, with the "Inflation Reduction Act" 45V article green hydrogen subsidy details clear, its binding with green electricity direct supply and local consumption, superimposed on the subsidy of up to $3 per kilogram of electrolyzed hydrogen, is enough to rewrite the commercial model of related projects, which may trigger significant changes in the choice of technical routes by participants in the US energy storage industry in the near future.
In general, in the case of no panacea on the demand side, the reshuffle of the supply side of the energy storage industry can be said to have become inevitable, but the specific path of market clearance is still quite uncertain, in Wu Hui's view, in the face of the current cycle changes in the emerging industry of energy storage, the competent authorities have begun to improve the construction of the energy storage industry standard system, and strive to create a fair competition environment, laying the foundation for the market mechanism to play the role of survival of the fittest.
Specific to the enterprise level, reducing costs and increasing efficiency, open source and reducing expenditure has undoubtedly become a consensus, and the practices of different enterprises are very different, but Wu Hui said that on the whole, if the enterprise itself does not have enough hematopoietic capacity, it can persist for a while by controlling cash flow and local subsidies, but if market pressure continues, then there will be a lot of ineffective production capacity to face withdrawal from the market "Although the overseas valuation may not be as high as that given by domestic A-shares, many energy storage companies, whether it is battery or system integration, have a lot of capital behind them, at least after listing, they can also give an explanation to the capital, so there should be more such cases."
In any case, the imbalance between supply and demand caused by the outbreak of unconventional supply has made the enterprises that have entered the game feel severe survival pressure in the high-speed growth track of energy storage, and it is a "squid game" that has been greatly reshuffled From the industrial level, the reshuffle of survival of the fittest will undoubtedly further force the energy storage industry chain to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and when the new industrial cycle is bound to come as scheduled, the energy storage industry from the business model to lean manufacturing is reborn, and it is bound to become another beautiful business card made in China.
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