On August 18, "2022 Schneider Electric Lithium Industry Cloud Summit" was successfully held online. As a high-profile lithium industry conference, the conference invited Hu Chaohan, vice president of Shanghai Electronic Engineering Design and Research Institute Co., LTD., and Gao Xiaobing, president of High-Tech lithium Research Institute, together with experts from Schneider Electric energy management, industrial automation, intelligent manufacturing consulting and other industry segments, to deeply analyze the industry wind direction. To explore the digital solutions under the integration of automation and electrification in the lithium industry and seek a road to the intelligent development of the lithium industry.
At the time of the lithium industry, enterprise scale, intelligent development is the key
At present in China, lithium battery has been applied in many industries, among which the new energy vehicles and energy storage field accounts for the highest proportion. Gao Xiaobing, president of the High-Tech Lithium Electric Research Institute, pointed out, "At present, China's power batteries have been exported in bulk, and the output value of domestic power batteries is also growing rapidly in terms of market size. In the next three years, China's lithium batteries will be in a period of intensive expansion." Under the background of such rapid development, the development of lithium industry "blowout" has become inevitable. At the same time, how to grasp this development opportunity quickly, to achieve rapid investment, scale development, has become an important issue.
Based on rich experience in lithium battery factory design, Hu Chaohan, vice president of Shanghai Electronic Engineering Design and Research Institute Co., LTD., believes that China's current lithium battery development is in a leading position in the world, but it is still in a stage of high-speed progress. "The design of lithium-ion battery plants is evolving towards larger and smarter designs. Intelligent lithium battery factory design can reduce the overall factory cost, improve the quality of products and crafts, and control the overall operating costs for enterprises." Through excellent factory design, lithium enterprises can have stronger competitiveness and achieve more benign and sustainable development.
Although the demand of the lithium market has made large-scale plant construction become an important trend, high cost of plant construction, complex structural environment, and high safety risks have become the resistance of enterprises in the investment and development of lithium industry. To this end, Li Wei, electronic industry architect in the low-voltage Marketing Department of Schneider Electric Energy Efficiency, and Hu Wei, senior solution architect in the digital energy business, shared Schneider Electric's full life cycle digital solution based on agile, safe and sustainable thinking, to provide driving force and help for the construction of lithium power enterprises.
Agile digital solutions, through lightweight deployment, to help enterprises shorten the factory cycle, fast production, and achieve flexible distribution, expansion of production carefree. This scheme does digital monitoring for a single Power distribution room or important loop. Based on EcoStruxure Power architecture and platform's edge control layer core innovation products -- active operation and maintenance expert PMBox and station control master POI Plus, to achieve full coverage of medium and low voltage power distribution scenarios, and through the innovative application of minimalism, In the design phase, the original digital capability is preset to improve the reliability of the whole life cycle from construction to deployment, from commissioning to operation, and improve the overall operation and maintenance efficiency.
Security digital solution, as an economical solution, aims at the lithium industry's demand for reliable operation of the production line, and uses PO system to carry out integrated monitoring of medium and low voltage for the whole station, so as to build the safety base of lithium power plant. "Schneider Electric has also designed two different power distribution architectures for the main material production plant and the cell and PACK plant to ensure the safe and reliable operation of the production line," Li Wei said. At the same time, according to the characteristics of the power system and the sensitivity of the equipment, the security digital architecture also imposed a four-fold guarantee on the power quality, with different product combinations to comprehensively deal with the low power factor, harmonics and other problems in the system, and fully meet the needs of different types of customers for the construction of the power system in terms of safe production and intelligent operation and maintenance.
Intelligent digital solutions take energy management and sustainable development of enterprises one step further. By adopting the advanced functional module POEM digital energy efficiency system and the asset health expert of POAE, the scheme can monitor the energy consumption and manage the asset health of the whole plant station. "Using digital technology and software, our solutions enable comprehensive equipment monitoring, statistical analysis of energy consumption and asset health management, helping customers continue to promote energy conservation and emission reduction while improving operational efficiency," said Hu Wei. This solution can help enterprises do a good job in long-term planning and management, so as to achieve sustainable development and achieve carbon reduction goals.
Each link of lithium battery production is sorted out digitally to achieve safe and efficient intelligent manufacturing
The rapid development of lithium industry should not only pay attention to the basic factory distribution deployment, but also pay attention to many challenges in the manufacturing process of lithium products. Lithium battery production line is composed of electrode making, cell synthesis, chemical component capacity, module detection and Pack, etc. How to achieve high efficiency and high quality lithium battery production, how to do a good job in material control and equipment preventive maintenance are the problems facing the development of lithium battery related enterprises.
"Digitization is penetrating into all aspects of battery manufacturing, helping lithium manufacturers create 'acceleration' in the development race." Schneider Electric Industrial automation lithium industry manager Hua Cui Rong introduced Schneider Electric lithium industry automation solutions at the meeting: "By combing every link of lithium battery production from a digital perspective, based on reliable and interconnected equipment, we enhance the automation and intelligence level of the production line under the EcoStruxure™ Machine architecture, escort for real-time control, reliable operation, efficient operation and maintenance, and drive the value of the lithium industry supply link."
On the basis of realizing production automation and intelligence, enterprises still need a set of management schemes to realize the vision of green intelligent manufacturing. For example, by building lean management system, they can help sort out the project management process, optimize the organizational structure, and establish a sound production and manufacturing index system. And provide production line design and optimization, warehouse management and plant layout guidance. To this end, Li Zhengjun, senior consultant of Schneider Electric's green intelligent manufacturing consulting Business Department, introduced Schneider Electric's intelligent manufacturing solutions for the lithium industry: "Based on management basis + technology basis as the guarantee, we have created an intelligent manufacturing solution architecture panorama for the lithium industry. This program covers consulting and digitalization, helping enterprises overcome all kinds of difficulties on the road of intelligent manufacturing transformation and upgrading, grasp the pace of competition, and move forward steadily." The program will systematically cover carbon neutral consulting services and intelligent operation and maintenance methods to help customers achieve cost reduction and efficiency, safe operations, low carbon and energy conservation and other benefits.
Insight into the trend of lithium industry, join hands to achieve a green future
At the meeting, Schneider Electric also published samples and white papers of lithium industry, aiming at analyzing the structural characteristics and development opportunities of China's lithium industry under the current industrial development trend, and evaluating the driving factors of the development of lithium industry. Explore effective solutions for energy management and industrial automation.
< /p>As a global expert in digital transformation in energy management and automation, Schneider Electric is committed to accelerating the development of the lithium industry with technology, insight and practice. Xue Yi said at the conference: "In such an accelerated period of industry development, we look forward to sharing digital energy management and intelligent automated manufacturing capabilities with the lithium industry through products and solutions, and working with industry customers to contribute to the rapid, high-quality and green development of lithium."
