Multi-Energy Microgrids: Designing, operation under new business models, and engineering practices in China

Abstract

With the global awareness of climate change and environmental problems, major powers over the world have set their goals to contribute to a low-carbon society. China announced the target of "carbon peak and carbon neutrality," requiring a cleaner, carbonfree, economic, and sustainable energy system. To this end, there are two promising approaches. The first is to increase the penetration of clean energies, such as wind power and photovoltaics (PVs). This can reduce carbon emissions effectively. In recent years, China has seen an upsurge in renewable energies, where the installed capacity of new energy generation is more than 388 GW, ranked first in the world for many years. The second approach is to develop integrated energy systems (IESs), which consist of multiple energy carriers, such as fuel cells, electric boilers, combined cooling, heating, and power plants, wind generators, and PVs and energy storage devices. IESs can leverage synergetic effects across multiple energy carriers, such as cascaded utilization of waste heat during electricity generation, and thus achieve higher overall efficiency. An IES is sometimes called the Energy Internet in China and has gained increasing attention during the past few years. In short, the traditional power system is undergoing a transition to IESs with a high penetration of renewable energies.