At present, some provinces in China are accelerating the deployment of hydrogen energy industry, and the golden development period of hydrogen energy is approaching. After hydrogen energy vehicles, "hydrogen storage", known as the "back wave" in the field of energy storage, has become the latest new energy buzzword. The National Development and Reform Commission recently issued the "Notice on Further Deepening the Market-oriented Reform of Coal-fired Power Generation On-grid Tariffs." The notice stated: "Strengthen the connection with the time-of-use electricity price policy, and all localities must speed up the implementation of the time-of-use electricity price policy, establish a peak electricity price mechanism, and guide users to use electricity at peak shifts, cut peaks and fill valleys."

Industry experts told reporters that the intensified peak-to-valley price gap will benefit the development of the energy storage industry. In particular, hydrogen energy can play an important role in the field of energy storage to achieve low-cost and long-term energy storage, which is conducive to the use of high-energy-consuming industries with large electricity consumption and the development of the hydrogen-energy automobile industry.

Hydrogen storage is the future direction of long-term, large-scale energy storage

The High Technology Department of the National Development and Reform Commission recently organized a series of seminars, inviting the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Natural Resources and other departments, as well as market institutions, experts and scholars to focus on hydrogen energy production, storage, transportation, refueling and terminal Make use of the entire industry chain, analyze and judge the development situation of the industry, and discuss in-depth issues such as the rational layout of the hydrogen energy industry, the orderly promotion of diversified demonstration applications, the construction of a clean and low-carbon supply system, and the formulation and improvement of basic industry standards.

Relevant parties have unanimously stated that the healthy and orderly development of the hydrogen energy industry is of great significance to China’s energy green and low-carbon transition and achieving the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality. It is necessary to further strengthen the top-level design, accelerate technological innovation, improve the policy system, and strive to achieve high quality. develop.

Zhou Xiaoxin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at the 2021 Global New Energy and Smart Car Supply Chain Innovation Conference on October 11 that under the "dual carbon" goal, the power consumption scenario will also change. For renewable energy sources with fluctuating output, such as wind power and photovoltaics, more effective energy storage methods are needed to support them.

Zhou Xiaoxin believes that the cascade utilization of power batteries is one of the most important ways to store energy from renewable energy sources. However, considering the large fluctuations of some seasonal factors and the need for long-term and large-scale energy storage, hydrogen storage is one of the future directions. Zhou Xiaoxin emphasized that "green hydrogen" is an important means of regulating renewable energy in the future, and it can also be used in new energy vehicles.

What is "green hydrogen"? Zhou Xiaoxin explained that it is the large-scale hydrogen production from renewable energy power. The production process is used as an adjustable power load of the power system, which can play a role in the flexibility of the new power system with a high proportion of renewable energy, similar to battery energy storage. , But use the energy storage from electricity to hydrogen instead of the previous energy storage from electricity to electricity.

However, Zhou Xiaoxin also pointed out that "gray hydrogen", that is, non-renewable energy such as coal-fired hydrogen production still needs to be treated with caution, and its proportion needs to be controlled. Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also pointed out that hydrogen energy storage is the core technology of new energy power systems, and hydrogen energy storage will be a key area of hydrogen energy utilization. Low-power, short-period, and distributed energy storage mainly relies on batteries, while long-period, large-scale, and centralized energy storage may rely on hydrogen energy and its carriers. Hydrogen energy is the best large-scale long-period storage of centralized renewable energy. way.

In terms of cost, hydrogen energy storage is relatively cheaper than battery energy storage. Ouyang Minggao said that in terms of large-scale energy storage, the cost of hydrogen energy storage is at least an order of magnitude lower than that of battery energy storage. If the electricity price cost of renewable energy is less than 0.15 yuan per kilowatt-hour of electricity, hydrogen storage must be economical.

In addition, hydrogen energy storage is also more flexible for hydrogen production, transportation and storage methods, including long tube trailers, pipeline hydrogen transportation, hydrogen mixing, long-distance power transmission + local hydrogen production and other methods can be applied.

Hydrogen storage needs to reduce energy consumption and loss

Some people in the industry also expressed concerns to reporters about the current status of hydrogen energy storage technology, especially the energy consumption in the process of electrolysis of water and the loss in the process of converting hydrogen into electricity.

According to the current technology of hydrogen production by electrolysis of water, 1 kilogram of hydrogen theoretically needs to consume about 40 degrees of electricity to produce, while 1 kilogram of hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water can only be converted into electricity by about 15 degrees of electricity. To lose at least 60%. There have been successful commissioning of hydrogen storage demonstration projects in China recently. On September 10, 2021, the hydrogen production system part of the first domestic megawatt hydrogen storage power station was officially commissioned at full load in Lu'an, Anhui, and the application of megawatt hydrogen storage in the power grid was realized for the first time. This project is the corresponding supporting demonstration project of the Science and Technology Project of the State Grid Corporation of China "Research and Demonstration of Key Technologies for Comprehensive Utilization of Megawatt Hydrogen Production".

In terms of hydrogen energy production and fuel cell vehicle demonstration, Zhangjiakou, Hebei has established a renewable energy hydrogen production plant. At present, hundreds of fuel cell vehicles have been demonstrated in operation. There will be more than 1,000 hydrogen fuel cells in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The car is put into use.

Listed companies deploy hydrogen storage related fields

In terms of listed companies, along with policy support, a number of listed companies have also begun to make new plans for hydrogen storage and other related fields such as hydrogen storage and transportation. Among them, CIMC Enric plans to set up a production line with an annual capacity of approximately 100,000 hydrogen storage cylinders. Sinoma Technology will make technical reserves for 70MPa hydrogen cylinders. Jingcheng will accelerate the implementation of Type IV cylinders. Furui Special Equipment will focus on 2021. Promote the small batch trial production of Furui's cryogenic liquid hydrogen cylinders.

"Although the scheme of electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen and reusing hydrogen for power generation has a big loss, the comprehensive utilization rate at this stage is only in the range of 20%-30%, but this is a big breakthrough." Professor of Tongji University, National Intelligence Yu Zhuoping, director of the Collaborative Innovation Center for New Energy Vehicles, told reporters that it is necessary to treat "hydrogen energy storage" as a "back wave" with a tolerant attitude.

Yu Zhuoping introduced that the power grid hopes to have a stable power supply. Now hydrogen is used as an intermediate carrier. The electricity that can be connected to the Internet is used to produce hydrogen. The electricity that cannot be connected to the Internet is actually converted into hydrogen energy and stored. This It can be done on a large scale and is expected to benefit a group of industry chain companies.

As a large energy consuming country, the entire industrial chain of the upper, middle and lower reaches of the hydrogen energy industry has a good foundation for development. Yu Zhuoping said that with the stable source of "green hydrogen", hydrogen production from renewable energy, hydrogen vehicles can also be further developed. It is estimated that by 2030, in terms of new energy vehicles, pure electric vehicles are expected to reach 65%, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can also account for a certain proportion. Editor/Xu Shengpeng