280Ah high-capacity battery cell
The popular high-capacity batteries in the ESS industry can greatly increase the energy density of energy storage systems, which is one of the important trends in system development selection. Fethium, companies such as Xiamen Haichen New Energy, AVIC Lithium Battery, Ruipu, and Chuneng New Energy have expanded their production of 280Ah batteries. Recently, the M1 intelligent factory of Xiamen Haichen New Energy Lithium Battery Intelligent Manufacturing Project Phase I was officially delivered and began production.
The overall layout of the factory consists of 5 lithium battery manufacturing production lines, with an annual production capacity of 15GWh. On the 19th of the same month, it was announced invest 13 billion yuan to build a 50GWh new generation energy storage lithium battery production base in Chongqing, with a focus on expanding the production of 280Ah battery products for power storage.
In late May, China Innovation Airlines released energy storage products for the shipbuilding market, covering a series of batteries such as 280Ah and various battery packs. Various signs indicate that high-capacity batteries are gradually penetrating the market.
Both cylindrical and square lithium batteries are gradually developing towards high-capacity single-cell batteries. Cylindrical lithium batteries have continuously developed from 18650 to large cylinders such as 21700 and 4680, while square lithium batteries have evolved from VDA-sized cells to MEB platform cells and now to (long and short) blade batteries.
The main direction of technological evolution is to continuously improve and develop the capacity of individual batteries. The single-cell capacity of square batteries has gradually upgraded from 50/100Ah in the past to a large capacity battery of 280Ah, which is also in line with the above evolution trend.
In 2020, CATL launched 271Ah&280Ah batteries with long cycle life and completed UL 9540A testing, achieving large-scale mass production. Based on this long-life battery technology, CATL, as one of the top ten power battery companies, launched the outdoor liquid-cooled electric cabinet EnerOne in 2020.
The product uses a 280Ah Lithium iron phosphate battery, with a discharge rate of 1C and a cycle life of 10000 times. However, CATL never thought that it would open the energy storage era of 280Ah batteries. At present, downstream owners and investors are paying more attention to 280Ah large batteries: in January 2022, China Huaneng Group issued a bidding announcement on the purchase and lease of energy storage batteries, purchasing a total of 2GWh of energy storage batteries and requiring that the unit capacity should not be less than 280Ah;
Jiangsu Tianhe also purchased 150/280/300Ah lithium battery cells from Jiangsu Tianhui, a subsidiary of Penghui, in February this year, with a contract amount of 600 to 900 million yuan. Large-capacity batteries have become an important product for battery companies to enter the high-end and large-scale energy storage market and obtain orders of gigawatt hours.
Can 280Ah batteries have a unified energy storage system?
How large are the battery cells of the energy storage system? There are still some controversies in the industry. Because, unlike China, Samsung SDI and LG Chem's ternary batteries in other countries do not exceed 120Ah, especially Tesla has taken advantage of small batteries to the extreme.
Some business people have told high-tech energy storage that 280Ah batteries are derived from power batteries. However, energy storage is a field that is very different from power, so whether 280Ah becomes the top flow remains to be verified. BYD's 320Ah energy storage battery will also be available soon.
Zhongtian Technology New Energy Industry Group, which chooses 210Ah large-scale energy storage batteries, stated that batteries are not pursuing high capacity, but rather considering safety and long cycle life.
At that time, Zhongtian Energy Storage chose 210Ah batteries mainly based on investment cost considerations. Scaling up batteries follows the laws of market development, while also considering the high safety requirements for energy storage on the power grid side. Generally speaking, the heat dissipation difficulty of large capacity batteries is relatively high, the consistency control difficulty of energy storage systems is relatively high, and their energy density is also high; When multiple series and parallel connections are required for small batteries during system integration, BMS and EMS cannot sample each node. High cost.
Due to the limitations of BMS, the individual cells of energy storage batteries should be large, but not infinite. Because the larger the battery unit, the higher the energy, and once there is a risk, the release speed and energy will be greater. So we cannot blindly pursue greatness. The overall principle should be based on high safety and long cycle life. More and more enterprises are flocking to the "280Ah battery research and development track", not to mention the practices of powerful manufacturers, but also some new enterprises are also flocking, making people feel like blindly following the trend.
Due to the deep coupling between battery cell specifications and product design, from the perspective of industry development laws, battery cells will naturally move towards unified specifications. At present, the specification of 280Ah is widely regarded as a unified specification in the short term. With the iteration of technology, the cell capacity may continue to increase, but the size will gradually become fixed. From the perspective of integrators, there will gradually be a demand for uniform specifications of battery cells in the market.
Advantages and technical challenges of 280Ah batteries
280Ah high-capacity batteries are gradually being recognized by the large-scale energy storage market, and this trend is still evident.
Its advantages include four points:
- 1. Reduce the number of parallel connections;
- 2. It can support energy storage systems for longer periods of time;
- 3. Easier BMS management;
- 4. Cost advantages of mass application.
Compared to batteries with a capacity of 50-100Ah, the advantages of large batteries with a capacity of 280Ah and above are mainly concentrated in the:
1) Reducing the use of components at the end of the battery pack has a natural cost advantage; Higher volumetric energy density;
2) Large batteries are easier to obtain high capacity; Improved safety;
3) The use of large batteries in the field of backend integration has a high degree of simplification of assembly processes, which can greatly save costs such as land infrastructure and containers.
Based on the above advantages, 280Ah batteries are accelerating to replace traditional 50Ah and 100Ah battery products in scenarios such as wind and solar power generation, grid side, shared energy storage side, and some large-scale mobile ESS applications that pursue low-cost, large capacity, and safety. In terms of the production process, there are two main processes for 280Ah large batteries: lamination and winding. Among them, the advantages of winding are high automation, high production efficiency, and the production line efficiency can reach 9-11 PPM.
However, the uniformity of 280Ah batteries produced by the winding method is poor, and there are problems such as C-angle when the mechanical stress and thickness of the batteries increase. The lamination process is derived from soft-pack batteries. Due to the large contact surface of the electrode, there are no mechanical stress or C-angle issues, resulting in good consistency and longer cycle life of the produced large battery products. The main drawbacks of the lamination process are the removal of electrode burrs and low efficiency, as well as the lower yield compared to the winding process. Large single-cell batteries also pose certain challenges to product development and production. Firstly, the increase in battery volume and capacity has led to a deterioration in the heat dissipation performance of the battery itself. Secondly, the issue of battery bulging is more pronounced than in previous models.
Summary:
The production efficiency of 280Ah large batteries is relatively low, and the production line efficiency of leading enterprises is 6-11PPM, which is much lower than the efficiency of 50Ah and 100Ah square batteries. In this case, the large-scale development of 280Ah will inevitably require the innovation of the battery design concept, especially in Thermal equilibrium and electric balance design and thermal management technology. High-voltage batteries are also an important trend in energy storage battery technology.
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