China's Contemporary Amperex Technology launched a new 6.25-megawatt-hour energy storage system which is expected to shake up the renewables market due to its promise of zero loss of capacity in the first five years.
The Tianheng system can be mass-produced and placed in a 20-foot-equivalent-unit container, the Ningde-headquartered battery giant announced yesterday. The cell has an energy density of 430 watt-hours per liter.
An industry insider said that the product poses a technological advantage as there are not many mass-produced energy storage products available on the market that can reach five MWh in capacity and as much as two years of zero attenuation. However, CATL might target overseas projects first as the novel product will not be cheap due to its high production cost, the person added.
Electrochemical energy storage facilities are becoming an important part of new power systems so there is no doubt that the product will reach a large market, Xu Jinmei, chief technology officer of CATL’s energy storage department, said in an interview with Yicai.
Competition in the electrochemical storage market, which includes batteries, should not be limited to price wars between market participants as CATL needs to use its resources to beat other types of energy storage systems based on fossil fuels, hydrogen, or even nuclear energy. Only this way manufacturers like CATL can expand the scale of the market, Xu explained.
Tianheng embodies the concept perfectly as the product should meet the market demand for high-quality, high-safety, and zero-degradation energy storage systems, Xu said, adding that compared to other products, Tianheng's energy density is 30 percent higher but the station should be 20 percent smaller.
Systems used to store green energy have become a new growth driver for the Tesla supplier. Last year, the segment earned CNY59.9 billion (USD8.3 billion) in revenue, up by 33 percent year-over-year and much higher than the firm's general growth rate of 22 percent. Still, batteries remained CATL's core business as energy storage made up just 15 percent of total revenue.
