Introduction:

With several major national telecom operators speeding up the construction of 5g base station energy storage, the demand for lithium iron phosphate battery that meets the demand of 5g base station has increased sharply, and lithium iron phosphate battery has ushered in a broad world. With the accelerated arrival of 5g era, the supporting 5g base station is also on a large scale "new infrastructure". With several major national telecom operators speeding up the construction of 5g base station energy storage, the demand for lithium iron phosphate battery that meets the demand of 5g base station has increased sharply, and lithium iron phosphate battery has ushered in a broad world.

Iron tower, telecom release lithium iron phosphate test notice

Recently, China Tower and China Telecom announced that China Tower and China Telecom will jointly organize the procurement of lithium iron phosphate battery for standby power. In order to improve the procurement efficiency and ensure the quality of product procurement, the two sides will jointly start the first batch of normalized testing of lithium iron phosphate battery for standby power.

It is required that the supplier for inspection should be the manufacturer of LiFePO4 battery pack products, and have the independent production capacity of LiFePO4 battery cell. The sample model is LiFePO4 battery pack (integrated) with 48V / 100Ah standby power. According to the detailed rules for the implementation of LiFePO4 battery testing, five battery packs, one BMS and nine single batteries are required to be sent. The testing of LiFePO4 battery for standby power is divided into three parts: system, BMS and platform access. In terms of safety performance, the battery shall be free from fire and explosion under the conditions of overcharge resistance, deep discharge resistance, impact resistance, high temperature resistance and short circuit resistance.

It is reported that under the general trend of 5g base station construction, the purchase of lithium iron phosphate battery for standby power has become a large expenditure of China Tower. As early as March 11 this year, China Tower issued the "2020 procurement notice of intensive e-commerce procurement project of lithium iron phosphate battery pack for standby power", which will invite tenders to purchase 2gwh lithium iron phosphate battery pack products. Finally, five enterprises, Shuangdeng group, Nandu power supply, Penghui energy, Zhongtian Technology and Shengyang power supply, won the bid.

Before the China Tower, on March 4, China Mobile announced that it would purchase about 1.95gwh lithium iron phosphate battery products for communication with a maximum price of more than 2.5 billion yuan. Finally, eight enterprises won the bid, including Zhongtian Technology, haisida, Shuangdeng group, Yiwei lithium energy, Nandu power, xiongtao power, Guangyu power and LiLang battery. The lowest bid price was about 0.661 yuan / wh, and the total bid price was 13.68 yuan 100 million yuan.

Lithium iron phosphate becomes the "favorite" of 5g Era

Industry analysis shows that the maturity and application of 5g technology has opened a new broad market for LiFePO4 batteries. At present, the traditional communication base station mainly uses lead-acid battery, but the battery has short service life, low performance, and high requirements for the computer room environment and later maintenance. The test data show that the power consumption of 5g base station is almost two to three times that of 4G base station, and the excellent characteristics of LiFePO4, such as high energy, long life, low cost and high security, meet this demand.

"Generally, the cycle life of lead-acid battery is 3-5 years, and the charge and discharge times are 500-600, while the cycle life of lithium iron phosphate battery is more than 10 years, and the charge and discharge times are more than 3000. That is to say, in the whole life cycle of base station, if the lead-acid battery is used, the battery needs to be replaced, while the lithium iron phosphate battery does not need to be removed." Shanghai Electric GuoXuan New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. said.

It is understood that China Tower has stopped purchasing lead-acid batteries since 2018, using lithium iron phosphate batteries as the backup power supply system of the base station. However, before the China Tower is still used to vehicle retired lithium iron phosphate battery recycling echelon. By the end of 2018, China Tower has used about 1.5gwh of echelon batteries to replace 45000 tons of lead-acid batteries in about 120000 base stations in 31 provinces and cities in China; in 2019, China tower base station will use about 5gwh of lithium iron phosphate batteries to replace 150000 tons of lead-acid batteries.

By the end of September this year, China had built 690000 5g base stations. As early as February this year, China Tower had built 200000 5g base stations. In addition, according to the goals of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, 600000 5g base stations will be opened by the end of this year. The large-scale application of 5g technology will require the construction of a larger number of base stations. At the same time, the upgrading of existing 3G / 4G communication base stations will provide more space for the demand of lithium iron phosphate. The demand of 5g base station market for lithium iron phosphate batteries will be sustainable.

"The demand of 5g base stations for energy storage batteries can be said to give the whole energy storage industry an excellent opportunity for development." Industry experts said that the 5g base station put forward a great demand for power system expansion. This means that almost all the computer rooms of the operators must transform the power supply system to ensure the power supply. Including switching power supply, storage battery and power cord have to be replaced. Lithium iron phosphate battery is the best choice at present, so operators are also in the bidding layout.

It is worth noting that in recent years, some enterprises focusing on automotive lithium iron phosphate batteries have also begun to join the power supply market of communication base stations. For example, in November last year, GuoXuan hi tech's 5g new energy industry base project with an annual capacity of 7gwh was settled in Tangshan. It is reported that the project will mainly produce 5g lithium iron phosphate batteries for communication power supply. In addition, several giants involved in LiFePO4 batteries, such as BYD and Yiwei lithium energy, have entered the market one after another.

According to the deployment of the Ministry of industry and information technology, China will achieve 5g commercial in 2020. It can be predicted that with the full commercial use of 5g network in China and the lithium electrification of backup power supply for communication base stations, lithium batteries will usher in a new huge incremental market and promote the development of echelon utilization of power batteries.

According to the calculation of Tianfeng securities, from 2020 to 2023, the energy storage demand of 5g base stations will be 7.6gwh, 9.7gwh, 10.8gwh and 11.9gwh respectively. In addition, the application space of 5g base station energy storage battery is extended by using high energy density lithium battery, and the capacity of energy storage battery is also higher. In addition to being used as standby power supply, it can also be used to "cut peak and fill valley" of TOU price. Industry insiders pointed out that if "5g + energy storage peak shaving" is realized, the demand for LiFePO4 energy storage batteries will further increase substantially.