Who Will Win, Lithium, Sodium, Hydrogen?

The future of domestic energy storage: market-oriented competition and coexistence of multiple technical routes. The downstream of energy storage is power grid, power station operation, household use, etc., which is different from lithium battery for vehicles (with long certification period and high consistency requirements) with high barriers to entry and high concentration. It is difficult to have an oligopoly pattern. It is more a competitive pattern with economic and cost advantages as the core, more like the photovoltaic industry.

Sodium power: The industrialization process is faster than the market expectation, mainly based on the theoretical cost advantage brought by high lithium price and the reuse of lithium power industry chain. Most of the production capacity from battery to positive pole, negative pole and diaphragm can be used. This is different from the competition of monocrystalline polycrystalline and heterojunction in the photovoltaic field, and the resistance of mature industrial chain is very small. The sodium battery will not overturn the competition pattern of lithium battery, but is more an opportunity for the industry. We need to look for the differences between the sodium battery and lithium battery in the material side, such as the differences in the process and cost of graphite anode and hard carbon/soft carbon, the differences in the performance and cost of several different routes of cathode precursor, the differences in fluid collection materials, and so on.
Hydrogen energy: The industrial chain is complex, including hydrogen production, storage and transportation, hydrogenation, and electric reactor. It is most like natural gas among the three fossil fuels. Although it is the cleanest, it is likely to be a supplement in the energy field based on its transportation bottleneck in the future, rather than a leading role; The application of hydrogen energy can be divided into public transport, heavy truck, marine and standby power according to Ballard's annual report. It is most applicable in the fields with high requirements for time and power. High power is the core competitiveness of hydrogen energy. A more convenient way is to find alternative fields for diesel and fuel oil. The commercial vehicle market may not be much, but the consumption of diesel and gasoline is larger. Can the ceiling of hydrogen energy valuation be measured by the demand for diesel? In addition to the application of hydrogen energy in the energy field, it is the demand for emission reduction in a large number of industrial fields (especially chemical industry) in a longer period.

Our conclusion: seek differences between sodium and lithium, seek similarities between hydrogen and vanadium, and seek investment opportunities for upstream materials. We take the negative electrode of sodium battery and lithium battery as an example to find the difference in the raw material end. Phenolic resin and biomass are the negative material of sodium battery which is different from lithium battery; We take the bipolar plates of hydrogen energy stack and liquid flow battery as examples. For the common component graphite bipolar plates, the application in liquid flow battery is likely to be far greater than that of hydrogen energy stack in the long run.