In the previous negotiations between Tesla and the CATL, the main focus was on the cobalt-free battery. Through communication with friends in the industry, it can be determined that Tesla will use lithium iron phosphate batteries, and it is the square iron phosphate of the CATL. lithium battery. At the same time, last week, following China Mobile’s price limit of 2.5 billion yuan for the centralized procurement of lithium iron phosphate batteries for communications, China Tower also announced that it would purchase lithium iron phosphate battery packs on a large scale without restricting the highest bidding price. The procurement of many companies also clarified the future downstream demand of lithium iron phosphate batteries and the future market space.
At present, the application fields of lithium iron batteries are not limited to new energy vehicles. They have potential application prospects in base station energy storage, industrial and commercial energy storage, large, medium and small UPS, grid-side energy storage, and user-side energy storage. Central Zheng Zhiju and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also held meetings. The meeting clearly stated that it will speed up the progress of 5G construction and promote the resumption of 5G production. The three major operators have also expressed their views to increase the construction of 5G base stations. Provided assistance for the development of the industry.
In the communication mobile network, the base station is the main component of the energy consumption of the mobile communication network, accounting for more than 80% of the energy consumption of the entire network. In the 4G era, the power consumption of a single base station can reach up to 1300W. Because 5G uses a larger-scale array antenna and higher bandwidth, the base station will process massive amounts of data and consume significantly more energy than the original 3G and 4G base stations. According to calculations, the single-site power of a fully loaded 5G base station is close to 3800W, which is 3.5 times that of 4G, and even under no-load conditions, the power reaches 2300W, which is 2.6 times that of 4G. If you consider the energy consumption of other equipment (such as air conditioning systems), the energy consumption of a single 5G base station will exceed 5KW. The design of the backup power supply capacity is generally determined according to the peak power consumption of the base station. In order to meet the necessary time requirements, it is inevitable to replace the large-capacity backup power supply. The typical value of backup power for a single 4G base station is about 11.2KWh, while the 5G base station needs to be expanded to 21.2KWh, which is almost doubled.
2020 will be the year of acceleration of 5G base station construction. According to the plans of the three major operators, it is estimated that 680,000 5G base stations will be built in 2020, and the demand for backup battery capacity will reach 14.4GWh. It is estimated that by 2025, the number of 5G macro base stations in my country will reach 7.6 million, and the 5G network will be dominated by micro base stations. Then the total demand capacity of the entire 5G macro base station backup power supply is as high as 161GWh, and the new battery demand in the next three years will be 14.42GWh, 21.2GWh and 27.56GWh, respectively, with growth rates of 423%, 47% and 30%.
Future 5G base station's demand for batteries
Since the development of the mobile communication industry, lead-acid batteries have been the first choice for backup power sources in the field of communication base stations due to their extremely high cost performance and technical maturity and stability, coupled with the huge market of lead-acid batteries and complete back-end resource processing facilities. The market for base station backup power is over 90%. As the cost of lithium iron phosphate batteries continues to decline, the backup power position of lead-acid batteries is in jeopardy.
From the price point of view, lithium iron phosphate batteries are twice that of lead-acid batteries, but from the perspective of usage costs, the life-cycle cost of iron-lithium batteries in the field of base station energy storage has far exceeded that of lead-acid batteries. The replacement of lead-acid batteries in the future is an inevitable result of the development of the industry. With the substantial increase in power consumption of 5G base stations, the cost of electricity has increased significantly, and base stations have strong demand for peak and frequency modulation. Lead-acid batteries have a lower cycle life and slower charging speed. Unable to meet the needs of the 5G era, and iron-lithium batteries bring great economic efficiency to 5G base stations in this regard. We estimate that after adopting iron-lithium batteries, the average annual backup battery cost is 8,100 yuan, which is 1,700 yuan/year lower than that of lead-acid batteries. If all the 5 million base stations nationwide use iron-lithium batteries, it can save 8.5 billion yuan in backup power costs. On the time axis, the cumulative use cost of lithium iron batteries after the third year can be lower than that of lead-acid batteries. As China Mobile takes the lead in opening the tender for iron-lithium batteries, China Unicom and China Telecom is also expected to follow up in the future.
The growth logic of lithium iron phosphate batteries has been verified in power batteries. Nowadays, lithium iron batteries will play a greater role in the energy storage of communication base stations in the 5G era. The future of iron-lithium does not stop there. As the cost of lithium batteries continues to decline, iron-lithium batteries are expected to completely open up supporting space in the field of large energy storage, and are widely used in various industries on the power generation side, transmission and distribution side and power consumption side. Various fields. We believe that the current recovery of the iron-lithium battery industry chain is the inevitable result of technological upgrading and cost reduction, and other obstacles are not worth mentioning in the face of cost. If the use of iron-lithium in the power field is a cost-oriented result, then in the field of energy storage, the use of iron-lithium is an inevitable technological upgrade, which is like a withdrawal from the suppression of iron-lithium batteries by ternary batteries in the power field. The decline in the price of iron and lithium and the improvement in performance have opened up huge room for growth in its own industrial chain.
