The Strategies for Increasing Grid-Integrated Share of Renewable Energy with Energy Storage and Existing Coal Fired Power Generation in China

Abstract

The growing share of renewable energies needs more flexible services to balance their intermittency and variance. The existing coal fired units and electrical energy storage (EES) systems may play an important role in delivering flexible services. The value of their flexibility services, along with the value of renewable energies, has to be analyzed from the perspective of the power system, in which the capacity costs and operation costs of renewable energy power units, EES systems, and thermal power generation units have to be taken into consideration. An optimal model is built to analyze the renewable energy integration and the flexibility services delivered by the EES systems and thermal power units in a power system. Taking the existing thermal power units and EES systems in North China Power Grid as an instance, the overall cost of the grid is examined for the penetration of renewable energies and flexible service provision. The results show that the growing shares of renewable energies are affected by their capacity credits and flexibility sources in the grid, and that the potential of thermal power units to provide flexible services will be reduced due to the replacement of renewable energies for thermal power generation. The results also indicate that the thermal units may be dispatched to have priority to delivering flexible services for the renewable energy integration, and that the curtailment of renewable energies may be regarded as one type of flexible service. According to these results, policy and strategy recommendations are put forward to weigh the role of existing coal-fired units and EES systems in providing flexible services, and to improve their compensation mechanism and their coordination.