China Tower plans to purchase 4GWh lithium iron phosphate battery for backup power
On May 13, China Tower announced the bidding and procurement of “2022-2023 lithium iron phosphate battery products for backup power”.
4GWh LFP batteries
This time, it is planned to purchase 4GWh lithium iron phosphate batteries. The number of proposed winning bidders has also increased from 5 last year to 8 this year. The proposed allocation shares are 22%, 18%, 15%, 13%, 11%, 9%, 7%, 5%
China Tower stated that the bidder should have the production capacity of lithium iron phosphate battery packs (including independent production capacity of lithium iron phosphate cells).
It is worth noting that in 2020 and 2021, China Tower’s bidding volume for lithium iron phosphate batteries for backup power is both 2GWh. This year’s bidding volume has doubled, indicating that its demand for lithium iron phosphate batteries has further increased.
In addition, the pre-bidders of China Tower were generally identified as 5 companies. This year, with the doubling of the bidding volume, it has also expanded the number of prospective bidders, which will provide opportunities for more companies.
Raised prices
It is worth mentioning that the bidding announcement previously issued by China Tower shows that the required purchase price of lithium iron phosphate batteries is not higher than 0.7 yuan/Wh, but in the “Change Announcement” issued in October 2021, China Tower canceled the purchase price of lithium iron phosphate batteries. The purchase price is no longer limited.
In fact, in the bidding and procurement of China Tower last year, the pre-bid price of one of the companies reached 0.78 yuan/Wh, which was higher than the 0.7 yuan/Wh before its “change announcement”. In this tender, China Tower only limited the price of “heating components” to no more than 35yuan/set, and did not limit the price of lithium battery products.
Soaring costs
This may be related to the soaring prices of raw materials for lithium batteries and the obvious rise in the cost of lithium batteries since last year.
China Tower has made adjustments in order to ensure the quality, cycle and delivery volume of delivered products, and to mobilize the enthusiasm of enterprises to participate in bidding
In fact, there have been battery companies that participated at a low price in order to win the bid before, but there were problems with the final delivery. In March of this year,
China Tower officially announced that they severely punished two new energy companies that had major breaches of contract
China Tower stated that the two new energy companies had major breaches of contract because they failed to comply with the performance assessment requirements. From March 24, 2022, the two lithium battery companies will be banned from participating in the procurement of lithium iron phosphate batteries for backup power by China Tower Co., Ltd. and its subsidiaries, and the blacklist will be valid for three years.
