Photovoltaic has moved from “supplementary power” to main power, and Huawei Smart Photovoltaics launches a new track

Huawei started the photovoltaic business in 2010 and launched inverter products at the end of 2013. In 2014, it led the industry in string applications. In 2015, it became the world's number one photovoltaic inverter shipment and continued to lead until 2019.

From centralized type to string type, from traditional photovoltaic to digital photovoltaic, and then to the current AI+ photovoltaic, Huawei's entry has brought new ideas and new technologies to the photovoltaic industry, opening the horizon of cross-border integration of the photovoltaic industry, and also for everyone presented a very exciting "Huawei Photovoltaic Struggle History".

In 2020, the story of Huawei's smart photovoltaics continues, but in this story, we have seen a new element-energy storage.

Taking household use as the cut, Huawei's optical storage integration "new start"

"I took over this year, and we made a relatively significant industrial strategy and planned energy storage products." Chen Guoguang said in an interview recently.

Since the beginning of this year, more and more provinces in China have put forward requirements for photovoltaic + energy storage, and energy storage has gradually become a precondition for project commissioning or even approval.

Chen Guoguang said: “Now the grid-connected cost of new energy has been reduced to a very competitive level through the efforts of the previous few years. We have seen that there have been parity projects in the first-class regions in China this year, and most overseas regions have entered parity, everyone no longer talks about subsidies, which has brought about an increase in the proportion of new energy solar power generation, but it will also have a certain impact on the grid.

We feel that it is time for energy storage products to be launched, and use energy storage products to solve the problem of uncontrollable and unstorable new energy. The application of solar storage technology will further reduce the cost of electricity and energy storage, and will also bring more scenarios to the photovoltaic energy supply model. Therefore, under the premise of maintaining the overall strategy, in terms of industrial strategy, we have moved from the original photovoltaic to a new stage of helping grid integration. "

At the SNEC exhibition held in early August, Huawei demonstrated its brand-new solution for the household market-the home 24H green power solution, declaring that it will lead the home into a new era of electricity consumption.

The 24H green power solution, as the name implies, means that household users can enjoy 24 hours a day of photovoltaic clean power. During the day, photovoltaic power generation is used to cover all household electricity needs, and the surplus electricity generated by photovoltaic power is also used to charge the energy storage. Peak power demand in the early morning to achieve 100% coverage of household 24h clean power.

Huawei's household intelligent energy storage LUNA2000 product is the core of this solution. It uses lithium iron phosphate batteries, a modular battery design, 5-30kWh, and can flexibly expand the power; each battery pack has a built-in energy optimizer and independent charge and discharge management. Support the mixed use of new and old battery packs to fully release the potential of each battery.

After the product was exhibited, it attracted the attention of many exhibitors and colleagues in the industry. Chen Guoguang said: “I have received many end users at the booth, some of them are the bosses of photovoltaic industry companies. They suddenly realized the combination of solar storage and solar storage after seeing our solution. It can still be used like this."

He calculated that based on a 200-square-meter villa in China, the average monthly electricity consumption is about 3,000 kilowatt-hours, and the annual electricity consumption is 36,000 kilowatt-hours. The electricity price for villas is actually very high, about 0.8 to 1 yuan on average.

After villa users use this set of solutions, solar energy becomes the main power. The cost of electricity can be reduced to only about 0.50 yuan/kWh. The cost will be recovered in 8-9 years. The income of IRR will reach more than 9.8%. The key is that  large part energy he uses  is green electricity, which is equivalent to planting 1,300 trees in the life cycle.

"If every villa is equipped with such a system, each house is equivalent to planting 1,300 trees, and the social value it brings is very high." Chen Guoguang believes that this is a very good zero-carbon model and requires everyone to come together to promote.

According to reports, Huawei's household-oriented energy storage solution will be officially launched on the market in the second half of this year, and is expected to become the first commercial energy storage system. This is also a solution that Huawei Smart Photovoltaics will focus on this year. For commercial energy storage systems, it is expected to be launched on a large scale in the first half of next year.

The exhibition of Huawei's household energy storage system is regarded as a signal of its formal entry into the household photovoltaic market. Different from the previous and current household market play, Huawei has positioned its products at a relatively high-end, and first launched a 24H green power solution for villa household users.

"The brand we have released this time is a market completely different from the current 7GW household market with subsidy policies. We target high-end users. The high-end market solves your electricity consumption model for self-use. It has nothing to do with the subsidy policy." Chen Guoguang said.

According to Huawei's plan, the goal of household energy storage solutions is to reach 20,000 orders worldwide by the end of the year. It is worth mentioning that Huawei’s 24H green power solution incorporates AI, such as "AI Intelligent Arc Protection". It is the first time that Huawei has integrated AI algorithms into AFCI in the industry. Through more accurate arc detection, faster fault protection, and comprehensive protection The safety of distributed photovoltaics.

"We believe that for households and distributed, safety is the first priority. Safety is a rigid need, and it must give people and enterprises an ultimate sense of security. The direct cause of a large number of fire accidents comes from DC arcing. How to accurately identify DC arcing has become an industry challenge, this is also the original intention of our AI intelligent arc protection." Chen Guoguang said.

According to reports, in addition to commercial use, Huawei's energy storage solution will also bring more possibilities for electric vehicle charging. Enterprises can build charging piles without reforming their mains, and an integrated system of optical storage and charging; in addition, in terms of the characteristics of VPP ,these distributed energy sources also use a unified management system to achieve centralized management of photovoltaics and energy storage, and also form a certain support for the power grid on the power consumption side.

Earlier this year, Huawei released the "Ten Trends of Smart Photovoltaics Report". The report made a forward-looking statement on energy storage and household use. It is expected that by 2025, the co-generation ratio of photovoltaic power plants will reach more than 30%.

The information in the report is so clear that everyone is not surprised that Huawei has launched energy storage products and solutions, but the outside world has doubts about all the core components in Huawei's independent research and development and production of energy storage solutions.

In this regard, Chen Guoguang said: “In fact, we all have core technologies and accumulations. For energy storage, such as the communications industry, we can achieve very fine and intelligent battery management through software. The cycle life of the battery, including the cost of charging and discharging, is always what we need to do and we do  better than other manufacturers. This is our core accumulation, including a large amount of energy storage application experience in the fields of optical storage micro-grid, communication site energy, data center energy, terminal power supply and other fields.

What we value is the integration of the entire energy storage and solar energy in the future. To realize the vision of turning photovoltaic power generation into the main energy source, it is necessary to truly integrate solar energy storage, so that it has the characteristics of a generator, and it can truly support the power grid. Support can not rely on traditional thermal power and so on.

So we see that there is still a long way to go for the technological development of photovoltaic power generation systems, especially software, control, and grid-connected technologies. "

Reshape the power generation landscape

The formulation of the energy storage strategy is based on Huawei's solid foundation for smart photovoltaics. For Huawei, the overall photovoltaic strategy has not changed from its original intention and needs to go further.

Throughout this year's SNEC exhibition site inverter products, almost all inverter manufacturers have launched string solutions to supply large power stations. However, the concept of string type was still a focus of controversy two or three years ago.

"Of the nearly 20 gigawatts of tenders for central enterprises this year, more than 80% have determined to use string technology routes. Their power station projects account for more than 20% of the world. I think this also represents the industry's choice." Chen Guoguang said .

Seeing the “unification” of the industry at the moment, and looking back at the scene when Huawei first introduced string inverters, Chen Guoguang felt a little complicated: "In the past few years, basically only our family made string inverters. This year, the biggest technical direction we will see  is that string inverters have been fully recognized by the industry. In our hearts, we actually feel that the efforts made in the past few years are worthwhile because the entire industry is moving in this direction."

Following the string type, Huawei has successively introduced concepts such as intelligence, digital photovoltaic, and AI+ photovoltaic in the past few years. Innovative ideas have subtle influence on the entire photovoltaic industry.

Chen Guoguang said: “In 2018, Huawei introduced AI technology to photovoltaics for the first time. We call it AI+PV 1.0. It is mainly the application of intelligent IV diagnostic technology in operation and maintenance, and the grid-connected technology that integrates AI algorithms. AI1.0  is mainly   used to reduce LCOE and make the grid more friendly.

At present, we are planning the future-oriented AI 2.0, which will integrate solar storage scenarios and reconstruct photovoltaic power plants. In the power grid, it will become photovoltaic generators and gradually replace traditional synchronous generators. This is to restructure the entire power grid. Energy has become the main energy source. "

It is understood that Huawei Smart Photovoltaic has carried out comprehensive cooperation with global partners such as China Power Investment, China General Nuclear Power, Huaneng, Tongwei, and foreign countries such as ENEL, and established an innovation center, uniting manufacturers of modules, box transformers, inverters, and brackets, working together to create an industrial ecology.

"When the digitalization and intelligence of the industry enters an explosive period, more innovative technologies such as cloud/5G and AI are also following up. These will continue to create new experiences and new models, and cross-industry integration and innovation can produce some breakthrough innovative technologies and some differentiated solutions.