Abstract
At present time, China’s power systems face significant challenges in integrating large-scale renewable energy and reducing the curtailed renewable energy. In order to avoid the curtailment of renewable energy, the power systems need significant flexibility requirements in China. In regions where coal is still heavily relied upon for generating electricity, the flexible operations of coal power units will be the most feasible option to face these challenges. The study first focused on the reasons why the flexible operation of existing coal power units would potentially promote the integration of renewable energy in China and then reviewed the impacts on the performance levels of the units. A simple flexibility operation model was constructed to estimate the integration potential with the existing coal power units under several different scenarios. This study’s simulation results revealed that the existing retrofitted coal power units could provide flexibility in the promotion of the integration of renewable energy in a certain extent. However, the integration potential increment of 20% of the rated power for the coal power units was found to be lower than that of 30% of the rated power. Therefore, by considering the performance impacts of the coal power units with low performances in load operations, it was considered to not be economical for those units to operate at lower than 30% of the rated power. It was believed that once the capacity share of the renewable energy had achieved a continuously growing trend, the existing coal power units would fail to meet the flexibility requirements. Therefore, it was recommended in this study that other flexible resources should be deployed in the power systems for the purpose of reducing the curtailment of renewable energy. Furthermore, based on this study’s obtained evidence, in order to realize a power system with high proportions of renewable energy, China should strive to establish a power system with adequate flexible resources in the future.
Highlights
The integration of renewable energy in China’s power system is in urgent demand in order to promote a sustainable energy transition [1]
This study first reviewed the reasons why the flexible operations of the existing coal power units would effectively promote the integration of renewable energy in China
It was recommended that in order to improve the integration of renewable energy in China, the power system was required to more flexibly operate the existing coal power units
Summary
The integration of renewable energy in China’s power system is in urgent demand in order to promote a sustainable energy transition [1]. It was found that both of the aforementioned studies had not calculated the potential flexibility of thermal power In another related study, Luo et al has predicted the minimum technical output of thermal power under different levels of accommodating wind power in typical days of 2020 in North Hebei (China), and stated that the minimum technical output of condensing units must be lower than the international advanced level of 25%, in order to achieve the objective of a 10% curtailment rate of renewable energy [11]. The promotion effects of the renewable energy’s integration based on a Mixed-Integer Programming model was proposed, in which the production processes with the existing coal power units flexible operations were simulated during the course of a one-day period. The research study is organized as follows: Section 2 reviews the reasons for the use of the flexible operations of coal power units to promote the integration of renewable energy in China. It will be necessary for coal power units to undertake more long-term peak shaving tasks [22]
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