According to the energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie., the output of China-made lithium batteries is expected to plunge by 10%, or 26 GWh, from the originally expected level of 237 GWh this year on the impact of the outbreak of the new coronavirus COVID-19.
The businesses of Hubei, which has been known for its auto industry, has been hit the hardest by the epidemic. Over the past few months, the auto-industry bases in Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui, and Guangdong were also affected. The total lithium-battery capacity of these places are currently estimated at around 162 GWh a year, which represents 61% of the nation’s total amount. Affected by the grave situation in Wuhan, the inaugurations of LG’s new lithium-battery plant in China and Tesla’s Gigafactory 3 have both been postponed by around two weeks.
The plunge in the output of the China-made lithium batteries is bound to affect the implementations of the major PV power projects worldwide; this includes a major energy storage system in the U.K. which is to set be supplied by BYD, and the two upcoming 1 GW grid-level energy storage systems that are being scheduled in China and Australia.
The customers of the batteries may try to switch to the non-Chinese lithium-battery manufacturers overtime to cope with the current coronavirus situation. Non-Chinese lithium-battery manufacturers like Germany’s Senec and Solarwatt have claimed that their operations will not be affected by the Chinese epidemic in the long run, as they rely mostly on non-Chinese sources.