The power of breaking hair is deposited everywhere, just like the supercapacitor industry, which is quietly working hard in the industry, is waiting for the arrival of "spring". On January 6, the "China Supercapacitor Industry Annual Conference and Application Exhibition" was held in Tianjin. Gao Bo, Secretary-General of the Supercapacitor Industry Alliance, said in an interview with a reporter from China Electric Power News at the meeting: "Supercapacitors have the advantages of fast charging, high power, With the advantages of long cycle life, strong temperature adaptability, environmental protection and no pollution, with the further development of the application market, we firmly believe that supercapacitors will become an important member of the energy storage family."

Unlimited domestic market potential

Supercapacitor is a new type of electrical energy storage device between traditional capacitors and batteries. Its mechanism is physical energy storage. The device does not generate heat. It has the advantages of high power, long life and good safety. It is irreplaceable in many application fields. . Its application fields mainly include backup power supply, replacement power supply or main power supply for low-power electronic equipment; electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle power supply; renewable energy generation and energy storage, instantaneous power compensation; variable frequency drive system energy buffer; military equipment, etc.

Cao Gaoping, a researcher at the PLA Chemical Defense Research Institute and a consultant for the China Supercapacitor Industry Alliance, pointed out in an industry report that there are currently more than 20 core supercapacitor companies in my country. It is estimated that by 2020, the size of my country's supercapacitor market will be about 13.84 billion yuan. Compared to 2012, the price of 3000F devices has dropped by 80%, showing a rapidly expanding market.

Compared with the European and American markets, my country is the first country to establish a supercapacitor industry alliance and has become the largest market for supercapacitors. In recent years, the rapid development of wind power generation in my country has provided a great use for supercapacitors, and supercapacitors are the best choice for windmill start-up and slurry changing systems. At the same time, with the development of my country's shipping industry, the use of supercapacitors in the mechanical system of port container transfer is also increasing.

Ruan Dianbo, senior engineer of Ningbo CRRC New Energy Co., Ltd. (“Ningbo CRRC”), said in an interview with reporters that, affected by the new energy vehicle subsidy policy, the new energy vehicles produced by CRRC for domestic customers are mainly powered by lithium batteries, but from the perspective of the entire life cycle, the future development potential of supercapacitors is unlimited.

Zhou Jianfeng, vice president and general manager of sales of maxwell in China and Asia Pacific, believes that many market segments of supercapacitors are still in the cultivation stage, the development process is still imperfect, and the true value of supercapacitors has not been fully reflected. He believes that the supercapacitor market is not a market from 0 to 1, but an emerging market from 1 to N.

Some experts at the meeting believed that the application potential of supercapacitors in new energy commercial vehicles in the future is huge, or will account for 50% of the entire application. In addition, in the fields of solar street light energy storage system, port machinery, fast charging treasure, rail transit energy recovery, smoothing the instantaneous fluctuation of renewable energy power generation, high-power motor startup, consumer electronics and other fields, super capacitors have a lot of application space.

Need to continue to improve energy density and cost performance

Although supercapacitors have many advantages, there are still two shortcomings that are the biggest constraints. One is low energy density and the other is high price.

At present, the energy density of supercapacitors with good performance in my country is 30 Wh/kg, while the energy density of most secondary batteries has exceeded 200 Wh/kg. This means that the volume of supercapacitors to store the same amount of electricity is much larger than that of batteries, so it cannot blindly enter some fields that are limited by space, such as new energy passenger vehicles, backup power supplies for communication base stations, etc.

In addition to energy density, the price of supercapacitors is several times higher than that of batteries for energy storage devices of the same capacity. Therefore, supercapacitors cannot be directly used as the main force of energy storage, but should be the main force of energy recovery.

In response to the current state of the industry, Academician Yang Yusheng, chairman of the Supercapacitor Industry Alliance, believes that the supercapacitor industry needs to further expand the industrial scale and actively expand new application scenarios and profit models. He gave two suggestions: one is to vigorously cooperate, conduct extensive trials of domestic supercapacitor carbon, find problems and improve in time, realize stable production as soon as possible, improve cost performance, and realize localization of high-performance supercapacitor activated carbon. The second is to cooperate with users to develop battery-type capacitors that meet specific uses, and vigorously develop the application fields and markets of capacitors.

Qian Weizhong, deputy secretary general of China Supercapacitor Industry Alliance and professor of Tsinghua University, believes that there is still a lot of room for the development of supercapacitor technology. Explore new materials and systems for supercapacitors, combine quasi-capacitors and new carbon materials, and develop supercapacitors with high specific energy. Capacitors, broadening the application range is the core of promoting the good development of the supercapacitor industry.

Gao Bo said that although the development speed of the supercapacitor industry is much slower than that of the battery industry, in the five years he has been in contact with supercapacitors, he has witnessed the development of supercapacitors. It will usher in a bright future.