Two in One! "Ning Wang" Has Released Another Big Bomb, And The Large Storage System Has Subverted The Traditional Architecture And Has Become A "trend"

Two in One! "Ning Wang" has released another big bomb, and the large storage system has subverted the traditional architecture and has become a "trend"

Recently, "Ning Wang" has released another big bomb, which has shocked the energy storage industry.

On May 7, CATL released TENER Stack at the Battery Energy Storage Exhibition in Munich, Germany. This is the world's first mass-produced 9MWh ultra-large capacity energy storage system solution. It has achieved breakthroughs in system capacity, deployment flexibility, safety and transportation efficiency.

The biggest highlight of this product is that in order to meet the 36-ton land transportation legal weight limit requirements of many countries around the world, CATL has developed a "Two in One" modular design, using an innovative "up and down stacking building block structure" to split the system into two modules, strictly controlling the weight of each half-height box to less than 36 tons, ensuring compliance with transportation regulations in 99% of the global market, and at the same time, saving up to 35% of transportation costs.

According to CATL, TENER Stack has an original split structure design, equipped with high-energy-density cells and five-year zero-attenuation technology, achieving a single cabinet capacity of 9MWh. Compared with the traditional 20-foot energy storage system, the energy density is increased by 50% and the volume utilization rate is increased by 45%.

Seeing "Two in One", it is easy to think of "ALL in One".

In 2020, Singularity Energy, the leader in industrial and commercial energy storage, proposed and adopted the "All in One" design concept for the first time in the industry, integrating long-life cells, battery management system BMS, high-performance conversion system PCS, active safety system and efficient thermal management system into a single cabinet to form an integrated plug-and-play smart energy block product eBlock.

Each energy block has the ability to store energy and convert AC and DC power, and can realize the elastic expansion and building block construction of energy storage power stations through multi-machine parallel connection, defining a new standard for industrial and commercial energy storage integration, and becoming the mainstream paradigm for industrial and commercial energy storage system architecture design thereafter.

As the top of battery cells and large storage systems, it is worth looking forward to whether CATL's innovative "Two in One" can lead the new standard of large storage system integrated architecture.

However, judging from the new large storage system products launched on the market since last year, breaking through the traditional architecture has become a trend.

Under the demand of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, large storage systems continue to iterate towards higher capacity. However, energy storage containers generally adopt international standard container sizes. Under a 20-foot container, the number of battery cells that can be accommodated is limited. How to achieve higher capacity in large storage systems? There are two ways to solve it. One is to increase the capacity of the battery cells. By using large-capacity battery cells, the number of structural parts can be reduced, and the system capacity can be upgraded synchronously while reducing costs.

Therefore, the product combination of 314Ah+5MWh has become the mainstream choice in the current energy storage market. In addition, 20-foot energy storage containers with capacities of 560Ah, 587Ah, 625Ah, 688Ah, etc. have also appeared on the market one after another, and the system capacity has continued to break through 5MWh, 6MWh, 7MWh, 8MWh and even 10MWh.

As battery cells become larger and larger, unlocking a larger system architecture and integration model has become another new direction that the industry is exploring. Since 2024, some companies have explored some new methods.

At the end of 2024, Haichen Energy Storage broke through the inherent product thinking mode and proposed the concept of PACK as the basic product platform. The modules outside the Pack were configured outside the 20-foot container. By decoupling the system functional modules, the strong coupling relationship between electricity, heat, control, fire protection, power, etc. was transformed into a weak coupling relationship, thereby unlocking a new form of energy storage power station.

In this decoupled form, 7MWh+ or even 8MWh+ system products can be achieved by flexibly configuring different numbers of ∞Packs. When customer needs change, the corresponding functional modules can be added like stacking Lego, greatly reducing the design and procurement costs of the product.

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In February of this year, Fluence Energy, an American energy storage system integrator, announced the launch of a new high-energy-density energy storage system Smartstack™, which subverted the existing energy storage system integration design concept and was a bold attempt by the industry to move from "fixed integration" to flexible assembly.

The energy storage system Smartstack uses 314Ah energy storage cells and can achieve a storage capacity of up to 7.5MWh. The architectural design gets rid of the industry standard 20-foot container and splits the system into weight and size units that are easier to transport.

Specifically, Fluence Smartstack is divided into two parts: Smart Skid and Smart Pods, which realizes the separation of the battery cabinet and the 3S system, and breaks away from the mainstream energy storage cabinet battery + 3S integrated in a single cabinet design.

Among them, Smart Pods is a modular and independent battery compartment, which only contains battery modules, local BMS sensors and basic temperature control units, and can support batteries from different suppliers.

The Smart Skid electrical control cabin centrally deploys 3S core equipment, integrates cooling systems, fire protection equipment, cables, etc., integrates intelligent control and monitoring systems, is responsible for energy conversion, scheduling and safety control, and can be connected to the battery compartment to achieve rapid installation and predictive maintenance without downtime.

It is worth mentioning that the solutions of the above two companies both emphasize the concept of modularization, and both can achieve longer energy storage time by adding battery modules, PACKs, or being compatible with different batteries.

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In March, Chuneng New Energy launched a new generation of 472Ah large-capacity energy storage cells. The CORNEX M6 series energy storage prefabricated cabin equipped with 472Ah cells covers four product matrices designed for different needs, which can be expanded to a flagship version of 2000V platform, 20-foot single cabin 7.06MWh.

The secret is that with the innovative design of horizontal and vertical clusters, Chuneng New Energy has achieved a market layout of one product and four solutions, which greatly reduces the cost of production line adjustment and can provide customized energy storage solutions for different customers.

For the 2000V - 6.28MWh system, in view of the future development trend of the 2000V high-voltage platform, the 1500V platform 6.28MWh system solution consisting of 40 plug-ins can quickly complete the switch. Without changing the number of cells or the overall layout, the clustering method is adjusted from vertical to horizontal, and the series-parallel method is changed to 8P520S. Each row of 5 battery boxes forms a battery cluster, and the number of cells in a single cluster is increased by 1/4 to 520, and the nominal voltage is increased by 25% to 1664V, meeting customers' needs for high-voltage platforms.

The starting point for the above-mentioned companies to break through the 20-foot traditional architecture of large storage systems is to achieve energy and efficiency improvements in a limited space and achieve differentiated competition, but such exploration also faces some new problems. For example, some people believe that CATL's stacked design has heat dissipation problems. A large number of energy storage units are easily stacked to accumulate heat, affecting battery performance and life, and may even cause thermal runaway. It is necessary to configure a complex heat dissipation system and increase costs.

At the same time, it also includes inconvenient maintenance, difficult disassembly and replacement of faulty units, and may require shutdown, affecting system operation.

Where is the end point of large storage system capacity? Should the design architecture be unified? As industry competition deepens, it will ultimately be determined by the market.