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in the morning trading today, a-shares fluctuated slightly, blue-chip stocks in the market adjusted collectively, and the shanghai composite index 50 was under pressure, falling in large volume and hitting a new low. technology growth stocks performed actively, the chinext index rose by more than 1% during the session, and the science and technology innovation 50 index also rose slightly.

on the market, the lithium battery industry chain strengthened across the board, with lithium mining, solid-state batteries, salt lake lithium extraction, power battery recycling and other sectors leading the gains; new energy industries also rose collectively, with bc batteries, perovskite batteries, virtual power plants, and ultra-high voltage sectors performing actively. oil, coal, electricity, banking and other sectors led the declines.

lithium carbonate futures prices surge

in the morning, the main lithium carbonate futures contract opened higher and rose, soaring more than 7% during the session. as of press time, the increase narrowed to 5.85%. the open interest of all contracts increased by more than 25,000, and the total open interest reached 410,000, a record high. this is also the first time in the history of lithium carbonate futures contracts that the total open interest has exceeded 400,000.

boosted by the surge in lithium carbonate futures contracts, the lithium battery industry attacked across the board in the morning session, with lithium mining leading the gains. the sector index surged by more than 3% and trading volume exceeded yesterday's entire day's trading volume in less than an hour after opening.

weiling shares rose vertically to the daily limit in just about one minute, and the stock price hit a new high in nearly four months. yongshan lithium, tianqi lithium, jinyuan shares and others also rose to the daily limit.

according to the latest statistics released by the china association of automobile manufacturers, in august 2024, china's new energy vehicle production and sales reached 1.092 million and 1.1 million respectively, up 29.6% and 30% year-on-year, respectively. new energy vehicle sales have reached 44.8% of total new vehicle sales. from january to august, new energy vehicle production and sales reached 7.008 million and 7.037 million respectively, up 29% and 30.9% year-on-year, respectively. new energy vehicle sales reached 37.5% of total new vehicle sales.

the china passenger car association predicts that in the next four months, the monthly penetration rate of domestic new energy passenger car retail sales will continue to exceed that of fuel vehicles, and this year the monthly penetration rate of new energy passenger car market in my country may exceed 55%. this means that the previously set goal of more than 50% penetration rate of new energy vehicle market by 2035 is expected to be achieved 10 years ahead of schedule.

with the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry, the demand for lithium carbonate, as the main raw material for power batteries, has increased significantly. albemarle, the world's largest lithium metal producer, predicts that lithium demand will reach 1.5 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (lce) in 2025 and will exceed 3 million tons by 2030. the annualized demand growth rate exceeds 20%.

in addition, driven by the clean energy transformation goals of various countries, the proportion of wind power and photovoltaic installed capacity has increased significantly, and the market demand for energy storage batteries has continued to grow rapidly. according to statistics from relevant agencies, global energy storage battery shipments from january to june 2024 reached 130gwh, a year-on-year increase of 35%.

everbright securities pointed out that lithium batteries are the most mature technology route for electric vehicles at this stage. hydrogen fuel cells are limited by the high cost of power systems and infrastructure construction, and their commercialization process is still far away. among all types of power batteries, lithium is an indispensable element. the future commercialization of solid-state batteries will greatly increase the demand for lithium.

favorable policies for virtual power plants continue

the concept of virtual power plants has performed significantly better than the broader market recently. after yesterday's large-scale rise, it continued to rise today. jinguan shares quickly hit the 20% daily limit after opening, and closed the board for the second consecutive day. the stock price hit a four-month high. nandu power, autex, guosheng technology and others also hit the daily limit or rose by more than 10%.

at the "2024 international digital energy exhibition" held in shenzhen recently, shenzhen released the virtual power plant control management cloud platform 3.0, upgraded the intelligent control function of air-conditioning load, and launched the low-carbon dispatch function. currently, the platform has access to 9 categories of 55,000 adjustable load resources, including charging piles, building air conditioners, photovoltaics, etc., with a total capacity of more than 3.1 million kilowatts.

among all the adjustable load resources in shenzhen, air conditioning load accounts for about 40%, which is an absolute large load with huge adjustable potential. according to reports, shenzhen plans to achieve a control capacity of more than 200,000 kilowatts for air conditioning resources connected to the platform by the end of this year, which is equivalent to meeting the electricity needs of more than 40,000 households.

as of august this year, shenzhen virtual power plant control and management cloud platform has carried out 71 load adjustments, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 2,273 tons. it is expected that by the end of this year, carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by 3,000 tons.

virtual power plant is one of the application scenarios of ai in the power sector, which is equivalent to a "cloud power plant". by directly dispatching massive distributed power load resources, load regulation can be achieved within a specific period of time to ensure the safe and stable operation of the power grid.

in addition to shenzhen, many places have also issued relevant policies to support the development of virtual power plants since september. the "implementation opinions on supporting the development of distributed photovoltaic and new energy storage in dongyang city" issued by the development and reform bureau of dongyang city, zhejiang province, encourages participation in virtual power plant load regulation and actively uses digital technology to carry out platform aggregation of distributed energy storage facilities.

the economic and information bureau of bazhong city, sichuan province announced the "proposal no. 132 of the third session of the fifth municipal cppcc". the document mentioned that it would accelerate the construction of virtual power plants, launch actions to help enterprises save electricity, and help enterprises reduce electricity costs by more than 4 million yuan, and more than 10 million yuan in the long term.

guolian securities believes that in the past, domestic virtual power plants were mainly in the stage of invitation-based pilots and explorations. virtual power plants applied for invited capacity and invitation prices for each time period based on the user resource conditions they had represented. in the future, virtual power plants can fully participate in the electricity energy market and ancillary service market as a market entity, and their profit model will gradually become clear.

proofreading:zhao yan