Evaluating peak-regulation capability for power grid with various energy resources in Chinese urban regions via a pragmatic visualization method

Abstract

With the development of renewable energy and the increase of peak–valley load difference, amounts of power grids in Chinese urban regions present great insufficiency of peak-regulation capability in recent years. It is necessary to evaluate the peak-regulation capability of power grid quantitatively and discuss the available measures to maintain the sustainable operation of urban power grid. This paper proposes a visualization method for evaluating the peak-regulation capability of power grid with various energy resources, which visualizes the peak-regulation supply by the cumulative histogram with typical unit on–off state combinations (UOSCs). In the proposed method, a cluster center-based extracting method is developed to reduce the number of UOSCs significantly and improve the visualization of histogram. Compared with the traditional optimization model-based methods, the proposed method is more pragmatic because it features high efficiency and is intuitive to applied. Numerical experiments based on a 5-unit system and the practical East China Grid (ECG) in Chinese urban regions are carried out to verify the validity of the proposed method. Further, two typical peak-regulation problems in ECG are analyzed by the proposed method and four measures with policy guidance are discussed to enhance the peak-regulation capability of ECG. • A visualization method of evaluating peak-regulation capability is proposed. • Effective clustering method reduces the number of unit on–off state combinations. • Two typical peak-regulation problems in Chinese power grid are analyzed. • Four measures are discussed to enhance the peak-regulation capability.