Southern Finance and Economics reporter Weng Rongtao reports from Guangzhou
In just three months, NIO has reached cooperation agreements with several industry giants in the battery swapping business.
On February 26th, Southern Power Grid Energy Storage (600995. SH) issued a notice on the signing of a cooperation framework agreement between its wholly-owned subsidiary and NIO Energy Investment (Hubei) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"). Southern Power Grid Peak shaving and Frequency Regulation (Guangdong) Energy Storage Technology Co., Ltd. ("Southern Power Grid Energy Storage Technology") and NIO Energy will invest in battery bank management, battery cascading and recycling, battery swapping business, and virtual power plant projects Collaborate on equity investment cooperation.
In addition to familiar battery banks, battery tiers, and recycling in the market, there is also an emerging concept of virtual power plants in this cooperation.
Analysts have pointed out that South Grid Energy Storage Technology and NIO Energy are expected to achieve "vehicle network interaction" through the virtual power plant project, which means promoting the integration of electric vehicle charging and swapping stations, energy storage stations and other resources into the virtual power plant platform, providing peak shaving, frequency regulation, and demand side response services, and becoming a commercial application of distributed energy storage.
The Commercial Concept of Car Network Interaction
South Grid Energy Storage Technology and NIO Energy will choose suitable locations to invest in the construction of electric vehicle swapping stations, while improving the convenience of swapping services and promoting the commercial application of swapping stations as distributed energy storage.
Both sides jointly promote standardization of battery swapping, research and development of battery swapping station patents, and opening of battery swapping patents. Carry out data sharing and data asset operation for swapping stations.
Both sides will also promote the integration of aggregated resources such as charging and swapping stations, energy storage stations, and adjustable loads into the virtual power plant platform, providing peak shaving, frequency regulation, and demand side response services for the power grid, and improving asset operation efficiency and efficiency.
The so-called virtual power plant is a new type of power coordination and management system that aggregates distributed energy through intelligent and digital collaborative processing platforms, thereby more reasonably allocating and using power resources.
And swapping stations are expected to become commercial distributed energy storage devices, providing energy storage resources for virtual power plants, participating in peak shaving, frequency regulation, and demand response of the power grid.
Specifically, when there is a high demand for energy, virtual power plants can release energy through energy storage carriers such as electric vehicles to meet the electricity demand. When there is an oversupply of energy, virtual power plants can feed back the excess electricity to the grid, achieving the reuse of electricity. Through this form of vehicle network interaction, electric vehicles can participate in application scenarios such as peak shaving and valley filling, virtual power plants, and aggregation transactions, effectively balancing the contradiction between the development of new energy vehicles and grid load.
As of February 2024, NIO has built 2375 replacement power stations nationwide, and has organized 587 replacement power stations and over 27000 charging piles to participate in demand response and peak shaving auxiliary services in 14 provinces and cities nationwide, with a total peak shaving capacity of approximately 300000 kilowatts.
According to the plan, NIO will build 1000 new battery swapping stations and 20000 new charging columns in 2024. By 2025, NIO will connect the high-speed battery swapping network of 19 major urban agglomerations, including 9 vertical and 9 horizontal lines.
For enterprises and ordinary users, connecting to virtual power plants, charging during low cost and non peak electricity consumption periods, and reselling electricity to the grid during peak electricity consumption periods can achieve certain economic benefits. It is reported that at a bidirectional charging and discharging power station in Hefei, Anhui, an electric vehicle can supply nearly 30 kWh of electricity to the grid within 1.5 hours, earning a profit of 30 yuan.
Shen Fei, Vice President of NIO, stated that NIO's participation in grid regulation mainly involves energy based peak shaving services and power based frequency regulation services. Among them, the peak shaving service can be called "off peak charging", that is, to increase the electricity price during the peak load period of the power grid, guide users to charge less or even discharge, and reduce the electricity price during the low load period of the power grid. Users can choose to charge at this time. Through this approach, it is expected to save approximately 120 to 150 million yuan in electricity bills this year.
NIO battery swapping Moments continue to expand
In the past three months, NIO has successively reached power exchange cooperation with several leading companies in the industry, achieving a forward-looking layout in energy infrastructure construction, and laying the foundation for its commercial expansion.
In November 2023, NIO successively reached battery swapping cooperation with Changan Automobile and Geely Holding.
For a long time, the lack of unified industry standards has been an important obstacle to the development of battery swapping models. Gradually, cooperation among various enterprises is expected to accelerate the standardization of battery swapping technology and the scale of battery swapping networks, helping the automotive industry to achieve low-carbon transformation.
On January 11, 2024, Anhui Energy Group, Anhui Provincial Transportation Control Group, and NIO signed a contract to jointly build a thousand battery swapping stations and established Zhongan Energy (Anhui) Co., Ltd. In addition, the three parties will also cooperate in battery standards, charging and swapping technology, battery asset management and operation, new power system cooperation, and supply chain cooperation related to the production and manufacturing of storage and charging equipment in the storage and swapping industry.
On the same day, Jianghuai Automobile, Chery Automobile and NIO reached a strategic cooperation on battery swapping.
Jianghuai Automobile and NIO are collaborating in multiple fields such as battery replacement standards. The planned new energy vehicle models will have a deep cooperation with NIO to launch "rechargeable, replaceable, and upgradable" models.
In addition, with the cooperation with Nanwang Energy Storage on February 26th, NIO has reached numerous collaborations in just three months and is trying to find a path of "infrastructure first, internal closed-loop, full scenario verification, and opening up to the outside world".
NIO has started to incorporate a light asset model into the operation of the power plant. Li Bin, the founder of NIO, introduced that NIO is trying to cooperate with external parties, such as building and holding exchange stations with partners, entering NIO's network, and entrusting NIO to operate. Dozens of exchange stations have adopted this cooperation method, and this model will also become a sustainable business model in the future.
Guotai Junan once released a research report stating that the battery swapping mode solves the long-term pain point of "charging efficiency" and has advantages such as battery maintenance, energy storage, and reducing car purchase costs. Taking the construction of battery swapping stations as an example, it is expected to build 22100 stations by the end of 2025, forming a 38.3 billion yuan equipment market space; It is expected to build 88300 replacement power stations by the end of 2030, forming a market space of 109.1 billion yuan for equipment.
Li Bin, the founder of NIO, revealed in December last year that NIO's charging pile business has basically reached a breakeven point, and there are also investors interested in independent financing for NIO Power. The possibility of independent financing for NIO Power cannot be ruled out in the future.