According to the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in order to solve the problem of recycling and utilizing power batteries for new energy vehicles, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with relevant departments, organized my country Tower Corporation Limited (hereinafter referred to as "China Tower") and other companies in 2018 to carry out the tiered utilization of power batteries, give full play to the main channel of power battery recycling and utilization, and strengthen innovation in business model construction, key technology research and development, standard and specification research and information platform construction.
As a large state-owned telecommunications infrastructure integrated service company, China Tower Corporation owns 1.9 million base stations and has a significant demand for backup power. By promoting the recycling and cascade utilization of retired power batteries, it has achieved centralized utilization and management of retired power batteries while ensuring essential communication services.
For a long time, China Tower Corporation has relied heavily on lead-acid batteries for its base station backup power supplies, purchasing approximately 100,000 tons of lead-acid batteries annually. Lead-acid batteries suffer from drawbacks such as short lifespan, low performance, and the presence of high levels of lead, a heavy metal. Improper disposal after disposal can cause secondary pollution. Therefore, starting in 2015, China Tower Corporation conducted trials in over 3,000 base stations across 12 provinces and municipalities to replace lead-acid batteries with second-hand batteries, fully verifying the safety and technical and economic feasibility of this second-hand utilization method.
It is reported that my country Tower stopped purchasing lead-acid batteries in 2018 and switched to purchasing recycled batteries. By the end of 2018, approximately 1.5 GWh of recycled batteries had been used in about 120,000 base stations across 31 provinces and municipalities nationwide, replacing about 45,000 tons of lead-acid batteries.
In addition, my country Tower Corporation has partnered with 11 automobile manufacturers, including FAW Group and SAIC Group, to plan and build recycling channels, and has taken the lead in implementing them in regions such as Shanghai, Hubei, and Guangdong. It has also cooperated with recycling companies to optimize the recycling process of retired power batteries, ensuring the centralized recycling and harmless disposal of scrapped batteries.
Meanwhile, we are collaborating with companies such as my country Post, commercial banks, and State Grid Electric Vehicles to research the application of cascaded batteries in areas such as backup power for computer rooms, peak shaving and valley filling of power grids, new energy power generation, and dynamic power capacity expansion. We are also building pilot projects such as a 15MWh photovoltaic power generation cascaded battery utilization project and a 10MWh wind power generation cascaded battery utilization project in the Hexi region of Gansu Province to improve the overall efficiency of cascaded battery utilization.
It is worth noting that while China Tower is vigorously promoting the cascade utilization of power batteries, some problems still exist. The most significant issue is the relatively small volume of retired batteries currently, leading to competition among downstream companies in the industry chain for limited retired battery resources, resulting in persistently high procurement prices for cascade-utilized batteries. Simultaneously, the industry faces bottlenecks in technologies such as residual value assessment, and urgently needs historical data on the use of power batteries to evaluate their performance, ensuring the safety and reliability of selected and repurposed cascade-utilized battery products.
According to the China Tower Corporation's plan, in 2019 it will continue to expand the scale of its cascaded battery utilization, expecting to apply approximately 5GWh of cascaded batteries, replacing approximately 150,000 tons of lead-acid batteries, and absorbing more than 50,000 tons of retired power batteries. Simultaneously, it will establish 150 recycling service outlets in 17 provinces and municipalities, develop various application models such as comprehensive backup power solutions, break through a number of key common technologies such as residual value assessment and rapid testing, and improve and optimize the technical standards and specifications system.
