They're one of the players, they're one of the leading players in the Western markets, but there's still a lot of potential for other players to come to you on top, or simply for Tesla to run away with things and be the all-out leader. Tesla's been the most ambitious in terms of its production capacity plans, so that really does set them in quite a good position for taking some level of market dominance or leadership in the US and Western markets.
Today you're going to hear from Iola Hughes, the research manager at Roe Motion. Roe is a research house and consultancy in London, set up about five years ago, and Iola has been there for four of them. They provide data and market analysis focused on the EV battery and energy storage markets, and even things like charging, recycling, and EV motors. Their team of 30 is growing quickly around the globe with analysts in places like China, Korea, and others. Iola and I eased into the conversation, so hopefully everyone can follow along, use the timestamps if you would like. Please consider dropping an early like to say thank you to Iola for making the time for us, and you know I'd appreciate it too. Enjoy.
It's time to get right into it. Can you just give us a quick overview of some of the main use cases and applications for battery storage and maybe touch specifically on the software side because I think that's where some people may not be as informed?
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, the kind of use cases for stationary storage are really quite wide and quite versatile. So when we think about storage, we broadly kind of classify into two key areas. So on one side, you have kind of grid storage, which is front of the meter, and then the other side you have behind the meter storage.
So firstly on the grid side of the market, here you kind of have two key places where storage is being installed. So the first one is renewable pad storage. So say solar farm or wind farm and directly connecting battery storage to sit alongside that generation assets. The other side of grid storage is basically connected to transmission or distribution networks, and these operate more as kind of a standalone system. And they get involved in a number of different different applications on the grid and serve the grid in a number of different ways.
And then on the other side of the market, you have behind the meter applications. These tend to be smaller batteries, and this encompasses everything from residential, solar and storage. So anyone installing say kind of power in their home, all the way through to things like telecoms, backup power, data centers using UPS, hospitals, using backup power, factory lines. So really there is quite a wide range of applications within that area.
In terms of the software, I guess maybe the way that a lot of the market works is, so I mean, primarily what you've got in a system is in battery cells. Often these are, you know, bought in from someone else. So some of the big players in this market, they tend to be called integrators because they're people who kind of take cells and put them into packs and then sell them in systems. So for example, like Tesla's.
So essentially, people who are manufacturing cells, these then get supplied to integrators. So this could be a player like Tesla or a player like Florence, who are essentially taking these kind of racks of cells or batteries and putting them into a larger unit and then selling on. And that's where they're kind of doing a lot of the software work. So, you know, managing the BMS, the battery management system, and ensuring that everything works in a kind of larger system.
And then the kind of the next change part of the supply chain, the integrator, the developers. So these are the people who are maybe purchasing systems from someone like Tesla or someone like Florence and then installing them in the ground and managing that asset once you're at one's dessert in the ground.
You do have quite a few players who are getting involved in kind of all three parts of this supply chain. So Tesla operates primarily in kind of integrator space. So then the people who are purchasing cells from elsewhere and then integrating them into a system. But you have other players who are, you know, building cells and building systems. So a lot of the Chinese players, for example, CZL, they produce their in cells, but then they also produce systems as well.
And then you have some players who are involved in the developer space as well. So probably the biggest one there is LG, so LG, they produce their in cells. They also produce their in systems and they acquired a company called NEC. I think it was about a year ago and they're involved in the kind of developer space as well. So kind of across all three parts of that supply chain.
Okay. So do you have a simple quick rule of thumb for the behind the meter front of the meter? Because I've seen many different explanations of what that means.
Yeah. I mean, generally the way that we consider. it is in front of the meter or grid is kind of directly connected into the transmission grid. So the idea there is being it really is supplying the electricity, the wider electricity grid and being part of integrating to that. With the behind the meter applications, these can often operate more as a, who is like a localized microgrid. So they're not necessarily interacting with the wider electricity grid. Is the kind of key differentiator there. And then one of the big things is is generally size. So for grid applications, you're generally looking at a lot larger batteries than what you see on the behind the meter slide.
Gotcha. Okay. Thanks for that. So is it fair to say that replacing peaker plants is one of the primary, if not the primary application for battery storage right now? Or are we seeing a much wider use case than just that?
So it's definitely one of the applications. Probably the big things now and particularly in the US market, one of the big kind of drivers for storage in the last few years has been storage was eligible for an investment power spreader when it was paired with solar. So the majority of storage being installed was being installed directly connected to solar farms. So the real kind of primary application there is more on the energy arbitrage size. So essentially, you know, if you can charge up your battery, you can basically sell it back to the red when prices are the highest and make the most money out of it. So that being one of the big ones and then also just, you know, providing resiliency for those renewable assets and ensuring that you can supply to the grid for a longer period of time. So, yeah, probably the biggest one right now is really just around how can we make the most money and the economic case, if that's there, then people are going to install batteries. The peaker plant area is definitely a big growing market. And in some regions in particular, that's really being considered as a good future option.
So in the Australian market, for example, they have quite ambitious plans for kind of phase down of coal plants and phase down gas plants. And a lot of facilities that were previously coal plants or gas plants, the plan is to once these get decommissioned or in the process of decommissioning them to install batteries kind of in situ there, the idea being you already have good connection in place. And it, you know, brings down the cost some lots of, you know, rather than finding a new site and building the whole grid connection, you've kind of, you can skip that step.
Gotcha. Okay. So you mentioned the inflation reduction act. It's been talked about ad nauseam, ads of late, but for good reason. So can you maybe give us a simple explanation of the difference between the investment tax credit and the producer tax credit because I think these get conflated fairly often.
Yeah. So firstly on the the ITC, the investment tax credit side of things. So this is something which has been in place for a number of years. And what the IRA did was essentially kind of extended it and also expanded it. So the ITC, which was in place historically was for solar and also for storage paired with solar. So essentially what it does is it provides money for, you know, the upfront cap extents of the installation. So you're providing a discount for the developer to install a project.
What it did with the extension, essentially you've extended that for another five years. So kind of out to 2025, 2020, seven projects can get access to this. And what it does as well was expanded to include standalone storage assets. So no longer did the battery storage have to be installed next to a solar farm. So that really expands the number of applications, which the battery can get involved in. It also, you know, opens up new business dreams of revenue and it's quite promising for developers.
In terms of kind of the amount of money you can get there, it's pretty significant as well. So as a baseline, essentially you have a 30% capex kind of saving. And then there's kind of add-ons you can get which bring that up to a 50% if you need certain requirements such as you know building an area where economic is not as economic strong or there's a brownfield site or is a basically an area which previously had fossil fuel industry is kind of acting there. So there's a lot of money to kind of get to just on the installation side. And on the back of that we've seen quite a lot of projects being announced or more projects coming through in the US market in the last few months.
On the other side of the picture you have the production tax credit. So this is really more focused on the actually kind of manufacturing of batteries and manufacturing of systems. So there's two parts to it. So on one side you have the for the battery cell production. So this is a $35 per kilowatt hour kind of credit. And then on top of that there is a $10 per kilowatt hour for pack assembly.
So with this part essentially we've seen a lot of kind of excitement around particulars $10 parts. So I mean using Tesar as an example so they purchase cells from CETL for their mega packs but they're purchasing cells and they then assemble them into their own packs. So essentially they can tap into that $10 part of the production tax credit and get access to that.
I think the idea down the line is of course you know get into the cell side of things as well and then you can get that $35 as well. But definitely in the in the last few months we've seen a whole lot of activity from energy storage players in the US market. Both from the cell side so we're seeing quite a few dedicated energy storage cell facilities or gigafactories being set up.
But we're also seeing quite a lot more assembly and system assembly being set up as well as announcements to move into into packs. So quite an interesting one being fluent. They do they historically they've just kind of done their bought packs from elsewhere and done just a system assembly.
So done really the the park conversion systems and the BMS and build the finished finished system. But they announced that in their use officer to see they're going to be getting into doing the packs as well. So you know tap into that $10 part as everyone really wants to.
Awesome. So is it accurate to say then that when an if Tesla chooses to use those 4680 cells from Austin or Akado road in the United States then they would be eligible for the full $45 per kilowatt hour credit for like the mega pack specifically. Yeah absolutely.
I mean with with the the cells coming out of KTRA Road you know wherever they go with they end up an EV or stationary they're going to be able to get those production tax credits. So you know right now they don't really care where those batteries are going to end up because they're going to happen to those credits.
I think you know at some point you know either expanding that line or getting into LFP production as well which is is really the chemistry of choice for storage right now. It would make sense to maybe move away from C8L's supplier so they can access those tax credits as well.
So are there any caps on what a company like Tesla can earn with these tax credits? There doesn't seem to be a cap in that sense. So yeah I mean some of the figures that have been thrown around in terms of what what these gigafactory factories are going to be getting just on like an annualized basis are pretty massive.
So yeah no real upper limit there to the amount of money they'll be receiving. Of course kind of policy can change and things can can change down the line but yeah right now it's you know if you can produce the cells you're going to get the good amount of money.
Okay awesome. So is it also true then that the numbers that are given in the inflationary reduction act like from the budgeting side those aren't really calves those are just kind of estimates. So if there are enough qualifying projects the numbers could exceed those.
Yeah absolutely and we actually did some analysis on that in terms of you know that that figure that was was put out I think was around 370 billion. We did some kind of back the envelope calculations on that in terms of what have been announced just for kind of the EV and battery markets and you know these these targets are exceeding the figures are exceeding by quite a lot and that's without even thinking about the other industries which are also going to benefit from the IRA so of course the solar industry is is a massive beneficiary as well and the production tax credit for the solar industry is also huge so you can tap into you know if you're producing wafers if you're producing ingots you can get certain amounts for each kilowatt you're producing as well so it's a big part of money but you know the figure that has been kind of put out maybe is is not quite as accurately high as it's going to be.
Gotcha okay and then can you touch on the importance of the inflation reduction act now allowing these credit transfers and specifically how we have cash for credits that may be great for entities that have a tax liability but now this may be opened up to a much wider market with the direct pay option where you know maybe entities that don't have a tax liability can now benefit from the inflation reduction act in these credits.
Yeah I think I think the big thing here being kind of the ability to access money sooner so rather having to go through the process of you know making a kind of tax reclaim you can kind of tap into these savings and get these direct payments sooner it does allow a lot more players to kind of benefit from them more immediately and also yeah access the market sooner.
Okay awesome so I hear a lot about the new you mentioned it earlier how you don't have to have these battery storage projects connected to renewable anymore so is that really a huge deal and can you kind of add some color into how big of a deal that is and maybe what rough percentage of projects now are moving forward that are not actually tied to a renewable source. I mean I don't have the I can maybe send you off with some some facts and you can you can add them in in terms of the the percentages that are un-peted but we're definitely going to see more of them going forward just because you know you can you can now access the tax credit without having to worry about pairing them.
It really just does open up the projects to a number of new revenue streams being kind of the main thing so I mean being able to install maybe where the grid is kind of the most congested so rather than an area where just where you have a solar farm you can look at areas in the grid or areas in the electricity network which maybe need kind of storage to help with with grid congestion can be very beneficial so that's probably the biggest thing just kind of tapping into new revenue streams and and then I mean there's a number of other services you can go involved in kind of like and salary services so just like balancing currency changes in in frequency or balancing voltage and that can can also do things so rather than you know in some cases where you need to do an upgrade to the grid you can instead install batteries there and that that could basically yeah help deal with some of the congestion and help us move some of that load which can be pretty beneficial as well.
A lot of us in the Tesla community we are trying to like gauge what the market looks like a lot of people throw around the term unlimited total addressable market when it comes to battery storage and Tesla deploying the mega pack so a lot of us like we just try to get an understanding of okay what's being replaced what type of companies are looking to buy this product and things along those ones so.
I mean I think I think peak plans is a good one to consider but probably one of the biggest indicators that we look at is more in in terms of thinking about however nervous being added to the grid so in in certain markets you have a bit more clarity around how this is going to behave so in China in particular they have pretty direct legislation in place now for storage so that comes in kind of different forms so each each province in China has its own kind of standard or levels that it sets but these tents are going to be between basically somewhere in the range of saying 10 to 15% off storage at a one to two hour duration with renewables so the idea being if you install 10 mega watts of solar you have to also install 10 to 15% of that as a battery with a one to our duration so if we just take 10% as kind of the baseline so 10 mega watts of solar you have to install one mega watt of battery storage and then with a one to our duration these tent actually be close to two out two out duration range so that means you know for every 10 mega watts of solar being installed in China you're having to install two mega watt hours of battery storage as well and these are kind of that's kind of like the baseline so you know each province has different targets here some provinces are saying four hour duration some provinces are going up to 20% but basically you can kind of almost see it quite clearly you know as China is ramping up renewable installations and this this this policy when you only can't stop clicked in the start of 2022 and we saw this market go crazy just because don't get requirements for battery storage to be installed as well so we we I don't think it's likely we'll see you know details of that clarity of you must install batteries to go alongside renewables in the US market but it does give a good sense of the sort of requirements that they they think are are needed in order to have proper integration of renewables on the grid and to ensure you you do have kind of a stable supply.
The other thing that we are seeing in China now as well is increasingly renewable farms are kind of banding together so so you have three solar farms located near to each other rather than each one installing their own individual storage asset what you'd actually have is just kind of one standalone storage asset but located near to all three of them and it would just be kind of the combined capacity of the three and that will kind of interact with all of them as well as the grid to provide kind of stability and and ensure those renewables. are operating probably okay
you mentioned the short duration battery storage so what is the cutoff is it like the six hour duration where it then goes into long or how's that go so I mean it's a it's a it's a very hot debated topic I would say no one really has a clear definite decision of what long duration is I was at a conference few days ago and there was someone from the UK government there on kind of the he basically was like head of electricity storage for the government so I asked him he was talking about long duration so I was like so what does the UK government see as long duration and he avoided the question very well so I mean in general we would say that the long duration is typically you know beyond eight beyond 10 hours is when you start to get into longer duration batteries that's something that it's I would say it's not really there's no obvious kind of barrier for what is long duration and what is short duration there is almost no crossover so you may have something which is six hours which some people would classify that as kind of medium duration some would classify as short and what we're increasingly seeing is you know technology is kind of move along that scale as well so historically I mean even even say two years ago people tend to say for lithium-ion batteries four hours was really that the upper limit in terms of duration but but now we're increasingly seeing projects come through with six hours with eight hours in China I've seen even the 10 hour lithium ion battery projects so that duration kind of classification is being pushed as well so yeah I wouldn't say there's a clear clear number well that's interesting and honestly I all that makes me feel so much better because when I was looking into that I got so many different answers and I just got confused so I'm glad I'm not the only one yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
what about just real quick like use case differences for the short duration for long duration so for anybody watching Tesla MegaPacks are either two or four hour duration so pretty much on the short side but what are some of the use cases for that longer side when it comes to the duration yeah so I mean longer duration you're starting to look into more kind of seasonal use cases so I mean one of the big things being you know if you look at the variability of how wind or solar operates during the year and also energy demand during the year so I'm interested in the matter in the year so you know in the winter you're going to have lower generation from solar but maybe demand is higher but you need something to kind of fill that gap then you'd be looking at maybe you can have some kind of seasonal storage so you start to get things like hydrogen coming into the mix so it's really just being able to store energy for longer and discharge it over a longer period of time
Okay, I wanted to loop back to the Tesla and how they may be benefiting right now from these producer tax credits. So, is it fair to say then that they're already earning the $10 per kilowatt hour using those cells from CATL, even though they're from China assembling those into modules or packs, and then they may actually already be getting the $35 per kilowatt hour for making those 4680 cells that are made in the United States, so they're actually kind of already getting the full $45 per kilowatt hour? Yeah, definitely. I mean, the I guess is how you really think about each part of the business so the 4680 cells right now I mean the primary kind of end market is for EV so that's kind of the EV side of the business.
But you know if you get to a point where any of those cells are going into storage then it is you know for storage as well. I mean right now the 4680 cells that are being produced are NCM chemistries so it's unlikely we'll see those being deployed in energy storage at any point. It would always be kind of a step back in terms of Tesla strategy around hutch cells they're using but you know if we get to a point where Tesla are manufacturing enough of these cells which I think is definitely you know in the plan for the future then for sure that that kind of $45 that kind of wow is kind of feeding into the storage side of the business. Okay, so that's a good distinction then that they can be already earning that $35 per kilowatt hour but on Tesla's side from an accounting standpoint whether it's going to reduce the cost of goods sold for the EVs or for the megapet if that's kind of the differentiator. Gotcha.
Yeah, all right, good deal. So, you talked about China briefly. Are you able to share anything on the different incentive programs globally like do places like China and Europe have incentive programs in place like the IRA? Yeah, definitely. So, I mean the IRA is definitely the I'd say the strong one of the strongest policy levers that we've seen and support for the storage market in China at a national level. I say it's not too much in terms of support but once you get to a prevent provincial level, it becomes a lot more popular these are often more on the kind of generation side so once a storage asset is in place, you may be able to tap into basically kind of a production from the energy you've generated.
So, I mean I've got a few different provinces I can give you. Yeah, in Quinghaw, I've got nine provinces basically if you generate over 540 hours for the end for the year so basically if the storage or asset is operating for that much you get 0.1 RMB per kilowatt hour generated. In northeast China, you get about 0.2 kilowatt hours per yep 0.2 RMB per kilowatt hour generated so that's about $30 per megawatt hour that you generate so over the course of the year that can add up to a good amount of money but it is much more on kind of a provincial level. Everyone kind of sets their own level of subsidy or incentive.
The European market is a bit different. I would say historically the European market has been relatively slow compared to the movement in the US and in China and that comes down a lot to a bit of kind of lack of policy support and also lack of cohesion. So, one of the big barriers in the European market is they'd expect a tax directive which was in place since like 2003, and it was around how storage was classified and it basically kind of classified storage is both a kind of drawer and a supplier and what that man was a double taxation so you were charge attacks for both supplying energy to the grid and also drawing it so charging and discharging which was causing issues for a lot of assets and which is why we don't see or we haven't seen much in terms of grid level deployments on mainland Europe.
The UK is a slightly different picture. The UK I mean is operating kind of independently from that we see a lot of projects come through in the UK and that really comes from I mean there's quite good in terms of revenue streams you can tap into the answering markets there but also there was a change in planning at the end of 2020 which basically kind of moved it from a national planning approval process to more like a local planning approval process so you can basically put push through bigger projects at a much more localised level which help the market in the UK and in Ireland as well actually. So yeah each market is operating a little bit independently.
I think in the EU, we're going to start to see a lot more support in the coming years so just I mean about a month ago now as part of the EU's Green Deal industrial plan which is it's kind of like their reaction to the IRA they announced a reform of the electricity market design and there was a lot of mention around storage and how you know demand response measures are going to be a big part of the future European grid and really highlighting the importance of energy storage as well and they also really it leaves like a ten-point plan. on energy storage and the the first one was kind of removal of this double taxation so there's kind of moves happening in Europe but not quite the same level of support particularly on the financing side as we've seen in the US there's a European sovereignty fund which should come out kind of in the summer I think and within that there might be a bit more clarity around how to tap into funds and access some of this money
okay awesome yeah that that's good stuff good to know so are the biggest markets right now China the United States Europe are those the big three when it comes to these battery energy storage deployments so far and are there any sleeper locations that were not should be in that conversation
yeah so I mean China the US sure Europe I mean it's a bit slower but it is it is happening a bit other markets they're pretty interesting as the Australian markets there's a lot of activity going on there I mean in terms of I mean mentioned it earlier around the kind of peak of plants and replacement of peak plants that's that's definitely a big market in Australia but also looking at you know the amount of solar that's being added to the Australian grid um battery storage is going to be a big part of that there's a few other markets which are pretty interesting as well so um I mean the Indian market has really strong potential for storage going forwards it's not it's not quite going yet or not quite got there yet but um you know in five years time I would say that's that's going to be one of the big markets particularly as you kind of look at um you know electricity demand growing in India as people elect five and people want access to air conditioning that sort of thing but another interesting market which is has kind of jumped up on my radar recently it's been the Turkish market so the the Turkish government or like electricity market regulation put out kind of a tender for energy storage and they had over 220 gigawatts of storage kind of sent in in this application process so right now they're only approved it was like 700 megawatt hour megawatts so quite small right now but they said over the next three three years they're basically going to tender about 20 gigawatts of storage so um yeah that could be an interesting market to watch over the next few years
okay awesome so when it comes to these deployments I mean what are some of the biggest challenges and drawbacks and hurdles for the industry right now is there anything I guess yeah what's holding back this market from exploding at this point
um I mean supply chain as with everything is always going to be an issue so probably the the biggest pinpoint in this market right now is on the system side um so I mean there's lots of sales being produced particularly I mean really in the Chinese market LFP sales being produced um but in terms of system manufacturing this is something that the industry is still lacking slightly um there's lots of lots of plans coming and lots of ramp plans so I mean of course you know Tesla with 40 gigawatts hours at Lathrop and then another 40 gigawatts and Shanghai is going to be um good for the market and bring a lot of storage through um you know Florence has it have have a few different production facilities um but in general there's there's you know not as they're not the amount of systems being produced as potentially that there is demand in the market um so yeah ramping up the the system reduction is going to be a big thing the other kind of biggest issue facing the market is really around grid connections and and kind of wait times for those um so it's easy for anyone to kind of say okay I want to install longer gigawatts hours of battery storage at this location but ultimately you're going to kind of join a queue to get the grid connection and you may be waiting for a number of years before you kind of get uh almost get the permission get the planning get the permitting approved but then also get the actual grid connection built out as well um so it takes time for these things
Yeah for sure is there any argument whatsoever for keeping any of the legacy system in the long term obviously this is going to take a long time to replace but in terms of moving forward with battery energy storage to keep some of these you know fossil fuel, pick your plants or that legacy system or is it pretty much at 100% battery energy storage is the way um I mean I think that in general fossil fuels will be part of a future to stick with that that we do have I think is going to be very difficult to go 100% um you know renewable 100% battery storage um one thing that that we will start to see more is you know integrative carbon capturing storage to go alongside any kind of fossil fuel generation um it's going to be very hard and it's going to take a long time to get to your point where 100% of the grid is green but um yeah yeah removing carbon in some form is going to be a big part of the future grid um and then of course you know you always need to have some kind of base load of energy generation um so if things like nuclear um are kind of potential to be a big part of that
okay awesome so if you were leading Tesla where are you putting the next mega pack factory to have one in later they just announced one in Shanghai so where are you putting the third one given what you know I mean Europe is probably the obvious place to go yeah I mean I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see uh yeah I mean an announcement in Berlin or somewhere else in Europe in the in the coming months or year um yeah wouldn't be a tour surprise by that I think um you know with Lathrop you've got your essentially your supply in the US market the US domestic market the demand is significant there that's that's all you're really going to be able to do with with that one facility the facility in Shanghai um speaking to to some of my Chinese colleagues their their understanding is that it's really going to be for export rather than domestic markets um and the idea there being I mean you can supply basically into the rest of Asia you can supply Australia and also potentially supply into Europe as well so then the obvious step really is to have have a facility in Europe um so you can supply the European markets um and then maybe that does free up some capacity for domestic supply in China as well for mega packs um I mean right now there are a lot of pretty like um successful energy storage system players in the Chinese market so Tesla's gonna you know have to compete with these have to be price competitive um so that's that's gonna be you know harder maybe potentially harder um market to break into than just exporting to to to Europe or exporting to Australia
Okay interesting so that leads me to a question that I had talking about the competitive landscape I mean as an industry insider like yourself I mean what's the narrative around Tesla are they the clear leader in a place like the United States or globally are they just one of the players do they still have stuff to prove kind of where do they fall in that hierarchy.
Yeah I mean I'd say right now they are they're one of the players they're one of the leading players in the western markets um but there's still you know a lot of potential for other players to to kind of come to you on top or similarly for Tesla to kind of run away with things and and be the the all out leader um I mean in the US market some of the the biggest players I guess um other lights are kind of like Fuyens Canadian solar power and Nidec ABB there's there's a really long list of players that are supplying systems um so ultimately it comes down to who can manufacture the most and you know Tesla's been the most ambitious in terms of its production um capacity plans so that really does set them in in quite a good position for you know taking some level of kind of market dominance or leadership in in the US and in western markets so yeah it's quite diverse landscape right now.
Um it's also it's also quite interesting one because if we go back two years ago cell manufacturers weren't really involved in the system space um so really they would just supply to I mean they were supplying to EVs and then any batteries they already had left over were just sent into stationary storage but a lot of the cell manufacturers are moving into the system space as well so you know with this level of vertical integration it's possible for them to maybe do things cheaper than Tesla can where they're purchasing cells so I think I think a big um a big part of whether or how successful Tesla is is in storage really comes down to whether they stop using their own cells as well um because I think you know you've really got to be interraced across those two parts to to be able to compete with say CETL who can do both cell and system.
Can you say that the market is big enough for multiple players specifically in the United States for the next few years to where basically whatever these companies are making they're pretty much going to sell it and you know at what point it made that change where you really have to be like the best of the best for these companies to pick your product yeah I mean looking at kind of our demand forecasts out to 2030-2040 and what's it looking at kind of renewable forecasts along that time scale um this isn't the market which is going to slow down at any point the next few years so there's definitely room for lots of different players um and you know when you can make comparisons with the EV market or with vehicle market multiple operators can succeed and multiple OEMs can succeed so I definitely don't think it's going to be a case of one player dominating necessarily um but you know the demand is really significant and uh it's going to continue to be significant so I think there's definitely a strong opportunity for for multipliers.
If you had to pick either your favorite two or the two companies you think are poised to kind of emerge as the leaders over the next few years first in North America and then maybe second over in China like do you have two companies that stand out yeah I mean probably the the ones who are kind of the the biggest and make the most noise it would of course be Tazza in the US and Florence probably the other other player which is really making a lot of good progress and um has quite significant expansion plans as well um there's a number of other US players who are really just getting started um particularly I think some of the really interesting ones are those who are just setting up gigafactories so our next energy core power they both have ambitious plans for gigafactories and you know alongside that kind of having integrated system.
如果你必须选择你最喜欢的两个公司或者你认为在未来几年中有望成为领导者的两个公司,首先在北美,然后或许在中国,你是否有两个公司脱颖而出呢?是的,我认为可能会是在美国的Tazza和Florence,它们是最大的并且产生了最大的声响。还有另一个公司,它也取得了很大的进展,有着相当重大的扩张计划,那就是Florence。还有许多其他刚刚起步的美国公司,特别是那些正在建立“gigafactories”的公司,例如我们的Next Energy Core Power,它们都有雄心勃勃的“gigafactories”计划,并且与此相伴随的还有整个系统的集成。
Manufacturing um so that that's definitely those are kind of interesting ones to watch in that sense um in the Chinese market I mean it's it's pretty diverse um a lot of the players who are doing very well come from a more like renewable background so players like Jinco solar um you know they come from a really strong footing in the solar industry and that's allowing them to kind of make moves in storage as well but probably the the biggest players over there are kind of the the names that that you kind of all know from cell manufacturing so it's ATL B-O-I-D um I really I mean if they've got the cell capacity and they can do it themselves then it's almost you kind of question why they would bother selling cells when they can just build a system and sell at a premium so it's uh yeah makes sense so you touch on that might be a challenging market for Tesla to break into the Chinese one I mean is it just be from a cost standpoint or is it the government kind of encouraging the their home players or what do you think those biggest challenges are for Tesla in that market specifically and why you think they'll be exporting more from that Shanghai Megapack factory then actually supplying to the local market yeah I mean from from chatting with with my Chinese colleagues the the main point they see is the cost point um just being cost-compressive is it's going to be difficult and that's really the primary driver for all right the truth selecting a system you know you go for the the most affordable one so that's probably going to be the the biggest thing um okay and you I mean you can just really imagine that if you have a CATL system or you have CATL cells in a Tesla system which one is going to be cheaper it's you know which way people are going to go so that that could be the kind of big point there okay yep that makes sense uh can you touch on the battery temperatures a bit I know you touched on the market kind of moving toward LFP you know maybe what percentage of the market right now is LFP is sodium ion at all ready to be a player in the storage space I know that's just starting to trickle out into the EV realm with BWIDE and CATL so what's that look like right now yeah um so I mean firstly on the completely amyon market so um this is kind of the dominant chemistry in stationary storage right now um you do have a few other chemistries which take little pieces of the picture but it really is predominantly a lithium ion story right now if we go back to kind of 2020 the market was basically 50 50 split between NCM so nickel-carbon magnies and 50% LFP so lithium ion phosphate um and last year that was closer to about 75 80% LFP um and that was something that that really shifts on the back of a number a number of different things but cost being one of the big ones safety being one of the other big ones um and then there was a really a kind of shift in strategies from the OEMs and from the salm manufacturers as well.
So the way this market was operating back in in 2020 was really a surplus market um so if you think about what sales Tesla was using in its energy storage product products at that point it was primarily whatever they were using in their EVs as well and then kind of just the batteries that were left over almost got filtered into their storage products and then you had a number of battery fires happen so you had the Victoria big battery fire um which you know scared a lot of people that was definitely a big concern for the market how this was going to you know impact the market and you know on the back of that I wouldn't say that was the primary driver but it was almost a turning point for a lot of the industry we saw a lot of developers saying we're only going to use LFP sales from now on um and then you know Tesla announced their strategy to shift the LFP um and a lot of other players followed suit as well so no this market is really in the last two years shifted quite significantly towards LFP if you look at certain markets in particular so in China it's closer to like 95% LFP um and they actually have some policy around technology choice as well so last year the national energy administration they put out a draft so this isn't kind of concrete it was just a proposal um basically to ban NCM batteries in in large scale energy storage so this wouldn't actually have a much significant impact in China because everything is basically LFP anyway but you can imagine if China is kind of mandating around what technologies should be used this is going to have a knock on effect to other markets as well um and then the other big thing we're seeing uh with with LFP chemistries is really kind of advancements around the the size of these cells being manufacturers so um increasingly we're seeing kind of the the voltage being pushed up um and also the amperes being pushed up in terms of these cell formats so I think last year's last year C80 I came out with a 280 ampower system uh or ampower cells that's a single cell 280 ampowers um and what that did was I mean you've got a larger cell so basically you've got less moving parts for the whole system so bring down costs it also allows you to kind of start to play around with the cycle life um so cycle life is it's kind of one of the most important things for storage because you want this asset to last as long as possible so they came out with their products last year which were about 8,000 cycles and then in the last few months we've seen a number of other players come out with their their cells which are putting that form out even larger so I think the biggest one right now um is EBE energy and they have a 560 ampower cell um and with that they're reportedly about 12,000 cycles so I've seen estimates that should last about 30 years of the system so increasingly seeing that kind of these advancements being made to kind of larger format cells specifically for stationery storage um and these are these are worth it so you know you you can really see how that market is going in terms of within lithium ion the chemistry is being used um
outside of the lithium ion batteries there are a number of different chemistries which are interesting and have good potential um there are there are lots and lots and lots of different ones that are all kind of at the novel early stage um someone who are publicly listed some of them are getting a bit of attention but they're all relatively early stage um then you have probably the two which are the kind of furthest progress right now um flow batteries um so these tend to be kind of vanadium flow batteries which are the most popular ones primarily in China there's a lot of activity going on there um but again these are still relatively pilot stage um at a cost point they're more expensive than lithium ion right now they do have potential to to kind of be cheaper and be cost competitive um but relatively early stage still and then the other big one is is sodium ion batteries so um these are these are really quite interesting for stationery storage and and we think they have potential to be quite big market disruptor um in terms of the chemistry being used so it really comes down to kind of a few key things
so firstly on the cost side so sodium is cheaper than lithium um particularly when lithium price is to high it's cheaper than sodium um I mean lithium prices have come down a lot now so that cost differential is maybe not as big as people thought it was going to be a few months ago um but the cost is a big thing
Safety is another big thing so um you know uh these batteries are safer than lithium ion safe than LFP um there's a number of other things which are really useful so you can like fully discharge sodium ion cells so it makes it really good for transporting it um you can also use um aluminium as the current collector instead of copper so that's another thing which is cheaper um so there's there's a whole range of things that make this cheaper or make this safer um so good potential for this market right now it's you know it is early stages we are seeing lots of announcements come through in China um but it will take time for this technology base to be kind of trusted in the market and also deployed so probably the the leading player now in terms of um a cell manufacturer is commonly called high-nower battery um so they have a one gigawatt hour gigafactory and they're planning to expand that to I think around like six gigawatt hours by the end of the year um and they have a number of offtake agreements with different um different kind of OEMs and also integrators um and they're planning to install a 16 megawatt hour battery um in China that's coming online this year so that's the the kind of biggest sodium ion energy storage project um which is in the pipeline right now um so they're kind of the leading player right now and they're making the most progress of course there's lots of news around CETL and CETL um they deem they display the their sodium ion battery at Shanghai Auto um so we're going to see more and more of it start to come through I think one thing that we we've really noticed is um particularly speaking to you a lot of the the Western integrators is they're going to be they're quite resistant to you take on a new technology at this time so I think we'll we'll see is um deployments in China come a lot faster than deployments anywhere else so you know in China we we can expect to see sodium ion projects come through in the next year next few years but in in Europe and in the US it's going to take a few more years for it to trickle through um and that really comes down to just kind of the integrators trusting the technology and and re-knowing what they're getting into um they've just got used to LFP so they're they're not sure about how new technology um is the new I guess the other things out is um that BYD announcement that that's still a rumor so everyone's been throwing that round like that's fact but um yeah just to clarify that's BYD denied that rumor so the sego is is LFP cells melt sodium ion interesting I'm glad you said that I literally just talked about that in my video yesterday so I'm going to have to update that good stuff uh yeah that's awesome information so thank you for that do you have any insight into why Tesla isn't making LFP cells now it does have anything to do with those patents that they can only be made in China for a while or are you not sure um yeah I think that probably was was a big factor for it and is why we haven't seen uh much LFP capacity in general in the US market um I think as well you know if you go back two years ago no I really thought LFP was going to be used in in EVs there was uh this idea that it was not not the energy density wasn't high enough and um NCM was just better so the investment wasn't really made in terms of further up the supply chain as well so in terms of um LFP cathode production you don't really have much of that going on in in the US market either.
Iola what are you most excited for in this space it doesn't have to be battery energy storage just anything at all what you're doing on a daily basis what you're seeing what are you most excited for over the next three to five years um I think the big thing is this this market is really just getting started um so you know we're going to see some some really impressive growth over the next few years I mean what in what I do a day to day I'm looking at both um the EV market and the stationary storage item things and both these markets seem to be you know somewhat of an inflection point where things are really just starting to get going um so yeah lots of lots of growth over the next few years for sure.
Well Iola it has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you thank you so much for sharing all of this uh knowledge and wisdom with us it's been greatly appreciated so thank you.