At a time when the price of lithium in China is high, sodium battery, as an alternative technical route for lithium batteries, is sought after by the market. In the eyes of industry insiders, it is particularly urgent to quickly reduce costs and transform the theoretical cost advantage of sodium batteries into practical advantages.
At a time when the price of lithium in China is high, sodium battery, as an alternative technical route for lithium batteries, is sought after by the market, and the investment and financing of enterprises continues, and the industrial chain is accelerated and improved. However, since last year, lithium carbonate, the raw material of batteries, has continued, and lithium batteries have declined rapidly. In January this year, some lithium battery manufacturers have reported 0$4 or less for wh**. Lithium battery ** has thus entered the "0$3 wh" era.
In this context, is the selling point of sodium batteries still competitive in the market? In the future, how much market substitution space will there be for sodium batteries? In the eyes of industry insiders, it is particularly urgent to quickly reduce costs and transform the theoretical cost advantage of sodium batteries into practical advantages.
The process of industrialization is advancing rapidly
Sodium battery is a kind of rechargeable battery with sodium ion as the charge carrier, and its research can be traced back to the 80s of the last century, but its research has been stagnant due to technical bottlenecks. In recent years, after several rounds of problems such as the rise in the price of lithium battery raw materials and the shortage of products, the advantages of sodium batteries such as low price and no resource restrictions have been gradually amplified by the market, and they have developed rapidly as a substitute technology route for lithium batteries.
Yu Qingjiao, secretary general of Zhongguancun New Battery Technology Innovation Alliance, said that in recent years, the sodium battery market has been booming, and there are as many as 29 newly signed projects in battery R&D, manufacturing and PACK links, with a planned production capacity of more than 290GWh and a total investment of more than 114 billion yuan. As of the end of 2023, 25 companies in the sodium battery industry chain have carried out 82 financings, and from the perspective of time nodes, most of the annual financing cases before 2022 are in single digits; In 2022, the number of financing cases increased to 17; In 2023, it will reach 47 times. "2023 is known in the industry as the first year of mass production of sodium batteries, and we believe that the mass production competition and order fulfillment of sodium batteries have begun. ”
Sodium battery has the characteristics of wide temperature performance, high cycle efficiency life and conversion efficiency, in low-speed vehicles, energy storage and other application scenarios, lithium batteries can be replaced, Chery, JAC, Yadea, Emma and other A00 cars and two-wheeled vehicles have been officially announced new sodium electric products. In December 2023, the 1MWh commercial sodium-ion battery energy storage demonstration project in PetroChina Dagang Oilfield was successfully connected to the grid. "From the perspective of the project's operation, the efficiency of the BMS DC side of the project is 93%-94%, and the efficiency of the AC side of PCS is 89%-90%, which far exceeds customer expectations. Li Xin, chairman of Huzhou Guosheng, the battery cell provider of the demonstration project, introduced that this is the first sodium battery energy storage system in China that has passed the performance test of the Electric Power Research Institute, and the project has also provided a demonstration for the large-scale application of sodium batteries in the direction of large-scale energy storage, and has accumulated experience.
It has a theoretical cost advantage
With the downward trend of lithium battery, has sodium battery lost its advantage?
Some lithium battery manufacturers 0The ** of 3 yuan wh is to clear the inventory in the case of oversupply in the market, which is not profitable. According to the current raw material **, the actual cost of lithium battery is higher than 0$3 wh. Sodium batteries are theoretically less costly. Wu Hui, president of the China Battery Industry Research Institute, told the China Energy News reporter, "From a dynamic point of view, lithium carbonate is difficult to maintain at the level of tens of thousands of yuan for a long time, and the cost advantage of sodium battery industrialization is prominent." ”
Zhao Jianqing, chief scientist of Zhongna Energy, emphasized to the reporter of China Energy NewsThe industrialization process of sodium electricity will not change fundamentally due to the fluctuation of lithium carbonate**. There are many technical routes for sodium-ion batteries, and the cost of cathode materials varies greatly among various technical routes. "For the polyanionic sodium iron sulfate of Zhongsodium, the cost intersection with lithium-ion batteries is about 40,000-50,000 tons of lithium carbonate**. Even now, sodium batteries still have a considerable cost advantage. With the ramp-up of production base capacity and the gradual maturity of the industrial chain, the cost can be 037 yuan wh, the future can do 028 yuan wh. ”
By the end of 2023, lithium battery energy storage has been put into operation and accounted for 97% of the new energy storage4%。Sun Jinhua, an academician of the European Academy of Sciences, believes that the new energy storage "one lithium dominance" is not as good as a hundred flowers. Sodium is the sixth highest element in the earth's crust, with an abundance of up to 23%, which is thousands of times that of lithium, and is evenly distributed around the world, there is almost no possibility of monopoly pricing and "stuck". Therefore, the development of sodium batteries is conducive to breaking through resource barriers. From a long-term strategic point of view, it is necessary to develop a variety of battery technologies such as sodium batteries and flow batteries. Not only has China clearly accelerated the technological breakthrough and large-scale application of sodium batteries, but European and American countries have also included sodium batteries in the development system of energy storage batteries.
Industry experts point out that there is no single product that can cover all application scenarios in an all-round way. In the short term, there is room for continued growth in technical routes such as sodium batteries, lithium batteries, and flow batteries. The follow-up competition is the sustainability of various technical routes, continuous cost optimization, continuous updating of materials, and continuous improvement of safety performance.
Collaborative cost reduction in the industrial chain
On the whole, there are few sodium battery brands and orders that have achieved mass production and are actually put into commercial application.
The positive and negative materials of sodium batteries are still in the stage of small batch production, and the ** is high. The hard carbon anode material of sodium battery costs 100,000 tons, while lithium battery graphite may only cost 30,000 tons, and sodium hexafluorophosphate and electrolyte ** are also more expensive than lithium batteries. Sodium batteries should achieve the ideal 0The cost of less than 3 yuan Wh urgently needs to open up the industrial chain, reduce the cost of raw materials, and achieve it through large-scale production to ensure the cost advantage in the competition with lithium batteries. Wu Hui predicts that by 2030, the global demand for energy storage will reach 1Around 5 TWh, sodium batteries will have a large market space. Lithium batteries will be partially replaced in grid-level large-scale storage and industrial and commercial energy storage, and the penetration rate in the field of home storage and portable energy storage is relatively low.
Sodium batteries can learn from the development history of lithium batteries. It took nearly a decade or so for lithium batteries to rapidly reduce costs, greatly improve performance, and rapidly advance application scenarios. Di Kansheng, executive vice president of Huzhou Guosheng, judged that the industrialization time node of sodium battery will be shorter and faster than that of lithium battery, on the one hand, the material system of sodium battery cathode, anode, separator, electrolyte and other materials is similar to that of lithium battery; On the other hand, the sodium electric production line equipment can directly achieve a higher level of automated large-scale production on the basis of lithium battery equipment. At present, the company has successfully developed sodium-ion pouch cells and sodium-ion square cells in small batches, and released a series of energy storage systems from low-voltage stacked tower home energy storage systems, high-voltage household storage systems, industrial and commercial energy storage systems to large-scale energy storage containers, and initially has the delivery capacity of 1GWh global sodium battery energy storage system.
In view of the application scenario of energy storage, Zhao Jianqing said that at present, the utilization rate of new energy distribution and energy storage projects is not high, and the reason is that the power grid and energy authorities are skeptical about whether the energy storage can operate safely and stably after being connected to the grid. Whether it is a lithium battery or a sodium battery, the industry should pay more attention to the performance of the product, and then talk about cost reduction and low price on the basis of safety, quality and stable operation, so as to jointly make the cake bigger and stronger, and build a healthy, sustainable and healthy competition industrial ecology.
Original title: The industrialization of sodium electricity is speeding up, and it is urgent to reduce the cost of the industrial chain.
Text丨Reporter Lu Qixiu.
End Editor丨Yang Xiaoran.