In 2018, affected by policies and government guidance, China's communications reserve lithium battery market shipments were 3.8GWh, a year-on-year increase of 216.7%, mainly due to the large-scale adoption of lithium batteries by Tower and China Mobile.
GGII expects that China's communications reserve lithium battery market will maintain ultra-high growth, with shipments reaching 45GWh in 2022 and a compound growth rate of 80% in 2019-2022.
Shipment and forecast of China's communications backup lithium battery in 2016-2022 (GWh,%)
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Data source: Gaogong Industry Research Lithium Battery Research Institute (GGII), June 2019
In 2018, Chinese communication operators and iron tower companies began to formally purchase lithium battery backup batteries in batches. Among them, China Mobile had the largest purchase volume of 0.8GWh; China Telecom's battery tender was still a large portion of lead batteries; China Unicom's tender for lithium iron phosphate batteries The scale is larger than telecom but the total is still much smaller than China Mobile.
Judging from the progress of operators' demand for lithium batteries, China Mobile's driving demand is significantly higher than that of China Unicom and China Telecom.
China Communications Backup Lithium Battery Main Winning Case
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Data source: collated by Gaogong Lithium Battery Research Institute (GGII)
GGII believes that the industry critical point of the communication backup lithium battery market is close, and 2018 is the beginning of the rapid development of China's communication backup lithium battery industry.
On the one hand, because the base station construction and maintenance company Iron Tower Company announced that the follow-up base station backup batteries will all purchase lithium batteries. In 2018, Iron Tower Company has purchased 1.2GWh of stepped batteries.
On the other hand, China Mobile, the leader in 5G construction, began to formally purchase new batteries on a large scale. In November 2017, a 800MWh lithium battery was publicly tendered as a communication backup battery in 2018, which marked the test period of communication lithium batteries in previous years. Completed, follow-up communication backup battery will be large-scale lithium electrification.
From the perspective of shipments of lithium battery companies, in addition to meeting the needs of the domestic communication market, Chinese lithium battery companies also export to Southeast Asia and other markets in batches.
According to data from the GGII research institute, domestic companies with more domestic lithium battery backup shipments exported more products overseas in 2018, and the top five companies by market size were Haguangyu, Nandu Power, and Haisi. Tat, Xiong Tao and Topband etc.
2018 ranking of domestic communication backup lithium battery companies
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Source: Gaogong Industry Research Lithium Battery Research Institute (GGII), April 2019
Starting in 2019, China's communications backup lithium battery will continue to grow rapidly, and the main growth drivers are:
1) China's 4G transformation and new 5G base stations: China Telecom and China Unicom's 5G base stations will be more than 2 times the current 4G base stations, while China Mobile will be more than 4 times the current. According to the 2018 annual report data of various operators, it is speculated that at least 14.38 million base stations in China need to be built or renovated.
In addition, due to the substantial increase in energy consumption of 5G base stations, it means that 14.38 million sets of backup energy systems need to be improved. According to the single-station power consumption of 2700W and emergency 4h, the market has at least 155GWh of accommodation space.
2) The tower company is expected to consume at least 5GWh of stepped lithium batteries and new lithium batteries in 2019. This lithium battery is mainly used in the replacement of the original 4G base station lead-acid battery. increase.
3) Increased demand in overseas markets: With the development of the Southeast Asian market economy such as India and Vietnam, when laying communication facilities in China, due to the scarcity of electricity, high-capacity and high-rate communication lithium batteries are used. This demand market will increase rapidly with the increase of 4G base stations.
Both the communication market and the electric vehicle market are trillion-level markets. Under the attraction of huge application prospects, the number of layouts has gradually increased, and many companies and investors do not understand the actual situation of the industry when they enter the field of communication lithium batteries. , Lack of industry-related data.
