Navigating Peak Summer: China's Energy Transition Enters Systematic Era

Navigating Peak Summer: China's Energy Transition Enters Systematic Era

2024-05-15 118 145

The "big exam" for the energy industry is not over yet.

After the beginning of autumn, the heat gradually fades, and the "peak-meeting summer" exam can finally come to a pause.

This summer, high temperatures occurred frequently across the country, with a sharp increase in electricity consumption for both industrial and commercial use as well as residential use.

The maximum load is expected to grow by more than 100 million kilowatts compared to the previous year, putting tremendous pressure on the power grid.

It can be said that one of the major indicators to assess a country's energy control strength is to see whether departments and enterprises such as the National Energy Administration, the State Grid, and the Southern Power Grid can go all out to ensure the electricity needs of the entire country during the "peak-meeting summer" period.

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However, the difficulty of achieving this goal varies from province to province.

In the economically developed and densely populated southeastern region, the pressure on the power grid is naturally higher than in the relatively sparsely populated central and western provinces.

But why has Jiangsu Province, which has a relatively high electricity consumption, managed to maintain the bottom line of not cutting off power?

The core is to flexibly mobilize power resources with systematic thinking to cope with the overwhelming pressure on the power grid.

Before the peak pressure on the power grid, a real-time meteorological forecasting product system was established to provide decision support for power dispatch management in the early stage.

In case of extreme weather, an emergency linkage mechanism is immediately activated, and a special team is established with energy and power departments to jointly protect the power grid.

In response to extreme weather, staff not only keep a close eye on the electricity load curve on site but also flexibly use offshore wind power to supplement the power supply through the prediction of weather changes.

This summer, the meteorological department of Jiangsu Province has connected the energy and power departments, integrated traditional power generation and wind power generation, and applied systematic thinking to a comprehensive layout, teaching a lesson to the meteorological departments across the country - facing the "peak-meeting summer", relying on a single department or a single type of energy is not enough.

Only by forming a pattern of multi-department joint cooperation and diversified energy cross-complementary can we "turn danger into safety".

In fact, it is not only necessary to have a systematic layout during the "peak-meeting summer" period, but also to break free from the shackles of "old energy" and rebuild a large energy network.

It is also necessary to have a diversified, systematic, and comprehensive perspective to concentrate efforts to do great things.

01 Refuse to "open blind boxes" again.

The importance of energy to a country lies in the fact that the energy structure determines the economic structure and also determines how a country will face the world.

However, petrochemical energy is like a blind box opened by nature, and we are in a passive position to accept the gifts of nature.

In China's blind box, there is an energy structure of "rich in coal, poor in oil, and less in gas".

This means that in order to support 1.4 billion people, China has been asking for coal from nature endlessly for a long time, and at the same time, it has to import a large amount of oil and natural gas.

The problem brought about by this energy structure is that the extensive development of coal resources has caused serious environmental pollution; the dependence on the import of oil and natural gas makes China easily "strangled" by the US-led oil system.

So, how to achieve "domestic replacement" in energy?

In the long run, China's solution is the "carbon neutrality" route.

Because the essence of the "dual carbon" goal is to replace underground treasures with treasures on the ground and to replace petrochemical energy with new energy in an energy revolution.

As early as the 1950s, China turned its attention to wind energy and photovoltaics on the ground and began a grand layout facing tomorrow.

The first is wind power.

Wind power started later than photovoltaics, but it was the first to achieve results in the energy transformation route.

In 1986, China's first wind farm, the Rongcheng Malan wind farm in Shandong, was officially connected to the grid.

Over the next few decades, Chinese wind turbine companies have been brave in innovation, and domestic wind turbines have quickly become the main force in China's wind power generation.

Looking at the global market, in 2023, the global wind power newly installed capacity reached 118GW, and 65% of the market share was occupied by Chinese companies.

The "Japan Economic News" also reported that in 2023, China topped the wind power generator patent competitiveness ranking for the first time, indicating that China's wind power has entered a new stage of "big and strong" global competitiveness.

It is worth mentioning that in the 2023 global wind power generator manufacturer newly installed capacity ranking, Chinese companies occupied four seats.

Among them, according to the report by Wood Mackenzie, Vision Energy achieved a record 22GW wind turbine orders in the 2023 fiscal year, ranking first among global wind power generator manufacturers, not only showing the world the determination of Chinese companies to transform green, but also allowing the "Chinese wind" to blow all over the world.

The second is photovoltaics.

Photovoltaics started earlier than wind power and is also the most profitable energy transformation route at present.

Before becoming the new three exports, the development of China's photovoltaic industry has been a bumpy ride.

As early as 1958, China developed the first silicon single crystal and applied it to the "Dongfanghong II" artificial satellite in 1971.

Before 2007, under the support of policies such as the "China Bright Project" and "Power to the Countryside", China's photovoltaic industry ushered in an explosive development, giving birth to nearly 1,000 photovoltaic companies.

However, the development of photovoltaics encountered two rounds of almost "annihilating disasters".

In 2008, China's photovoltaic industry was affected by the US financial crisis and entered a period of decline under the situation of "strangling" raw materials and core technologies.

In 2008 alone, more than 300 photovoltaic companies went bankrupt.

And under the promotion of policies, when domestication achieved great results, photovoltaic companies were immediately subjected to anti-dumping sanctions by the United States and Europe.

According to statistics, in 2013, more than 350 companies in the upstream and downstream of China's photovoltaic industry went bankrupt.

"The invisible hand" once again came out to save the market.

Starting from 2014, China's photovoltaics gradually warmed up under the support of policies, replacing clothing, home appliances, and furniture, and forming a new three exports with electric vehicles and lithium batteries.

The latest data shows that in the first seven months of this year, China's solar power installed capacity was about 740 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 49.8%, and the dividend release has not yet reached the end.

02 The "systematic" sublimation of China's energy transformation.

Wind power and photovoltaics represent two independent routes of China's new energy power generation side transformation.

These two routes each have their own development rhythm and industry cycle, and there is also an undeniable common point: as long as it is a natural resource, there is an unbalanced structural contradiction.

For example, photovoltaic power generation, which uses solar energy as the source of power, has a vast geographical area and abundant sunlight in the central and western regions of China, but the photovoltaic resources in the southeastern region are limited, and the electricity consumption of industry, commerce, and residents is far higher than that in the central and western regions.

How to break through the limitations of land resources and natural resources to ensure that clean energy is balanced and stably supplied to the national electricity?

The principle is simple.

Store energy, supply electricity when needed, and store it when idle.

This is the best embodiment of human initiative under the premise that natural laws cannot be avoided.

In the past ten years, energy storage has been more of an accompanying product in the fields of wind power and photovoltaics.

But when the overflow of technological dividends reaches a certain limit, Tian Qingjun, Senior Vice President of Vision Group, said: "From the development stage, energy storage is becoming a new growth point for wind power and photovoltaics."

From the perspective of energy structure, China needs at least 100 billion kilowatts of wind power and photovoltaic installations to achieve the dual-carbon goal, and it has just exceeded 12 billion kilowatts.

However, the power generation penetration rate of wind power and photovoltaics has reached 20%, close to the limit of the power grid.

To maintain the safe and stable operation of the power grid, the power system must be compatible with a high proportion of wind power and photovoltaics, and large-scale energy storage is inevitable.

Compared with wind power and photovoltaics, the advantage of energy storage is that it is less restricted by land resources and resource endowments.

"The natural imbalance between the power generation side and the load side is destined to 'have electricity, there is storage'.

In the future, the power system's power generation and electricity prices will be more volatile, and the greater the fluctuation of power generation and electricity prices, the greater the value created by energy storage, and the better the development prospects."

Tian Qingjun said that at present, energy storage is rapidly developing towards higher energy density, lower degree electricity costs, and ultimate safety, and application scenarios continue to emerge.

Traditional energy is mainly based on thermal power, and the power grid adjustment is "source follows load".

However, under the background of the "dual carbon" goal, the new type of power system with new energy as the main body is the trend of the times.

The challenge of a high proportion of new energy and a high proportion of power electronic equipment to the safe and stable operation of the power grid is becoming more and more severe, and the grid-forming technology is particularly important.

Energy storage will not only become the "stabilizer" of the power grid, helping the power grid to adjust frequency and peak, but also support the safe and stable operation of the new energy system through grid-forming functions.

Vision Energy promotes the integration of AI and grid-forming technology, and independently develops the GenGrid generative grid technology.

The "1+4" full-stack grid-forming technology can realize autonomous adjustment of inertia, impedance, frequency, voltage and other parameters through the perception and identification of data on the source side, grid side, and user side, combined with historical data large models.

It has the grid-forming capabilities of inertia support, voltage support, wide-frequency oscillation suppression, enhanced grid strength, and station-level black start, and can flexibly adapt to various scenarios such as isolated networks, weak networks, and new energy large bases, supporting the safe and stable operation of the new energy system.

For Vision itself, it has participated in more than 200 large-scale energy storage projects worldwide, and has been rated as a global first-class energy storage manufacturer by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ranking fifth in global shipments, delivering more than 15GWh, including large-scale energy storage projects such as the Singapore Jurong Island project and the UK Wormald Green project.

At the third EESA Energy Storage Exhibition, Vision also officially released a new generation of system-level energy storage, including full-scene system-level products, system-level technology, system-level solutions, and system-level services, aiming to solve the challenges of flexibility, stability, and economy brought by a high proportion of new energy.

In terms of products, Vision released the world's largest capacity energy storage system, with a 20-foot container capacity breaking through to 8MWh+, and the unit area energy density reaching 541kWh/㎡, setting a new industry record.

In addition, three commercial and industrial integrated cabinets of 215 kWh, 256 kWh, and 372 kWh, as well as a 480kW zero-carbon supercharging pile, will also promote Vision's user-side energy storage solutions to develop towards a finer granularity, not only reducing electricity costs but also expanding energy storage scenarios.On the technical front, the EnOS energy storage management platform, based on AI and large models, promotes integration, intelligence, and automation in production, transaction, and operation, achieving optimized trading strategies and closed-loop control.

Leveraging the EnOS trading AI, real-time access to electricity trading information is possible, interpreting trading rules, and reducing the professional barriers for energy storage to participate in the electricity market.

Additionally, according to the diverse needs of users, EnOS's "system-level solution" can provide "Energy Storage + X" integrated solutions, addressing green electricity demands flexibly through cross-structures like wind-storage, photovoltaic-storage, and source-network-load storage.

As we enter the energy storage construction phase, EnOS's "system-level service" can delve into various stages such as "site selection, network structure analysis, power supply and demand forecasting, service power station investment, planning decision-making," mid-term high-quality rapid delivery, and post-period operation and maintenance, and environmental recycling, providing users with a full lifecycle energy storage guarantee.

It is evident that the keyword for EnOS's new generation of energy storage is "systematic."

Compared to traditional energy storage methods, EnOS's "systematic" energy storage breaks the simple linear thinking of "charging-discharging," extending user-side energy storage towards intelligence by fine-tuning user needs and providing targeted solutions, also achieving a full-process closed-loop tracking of "planning-construction-guarantee" for user-side energy storage.

More importantly, by systematically integrating products, technology, solutions, and services, EnOS's new generation of energy storage will reduce the cost and psychological barriers for users to store energy, increasing the penetration rate of user-side energy storage.

At the same time, as the significance of energy storage in the business structure becomes prominent, EnOS's green electricity layout also moves towards a "systematic" sublimation, achieving a clean electricity internal cycle of "generation-consumption-storage-discharge-consumption."

In EnOS's green electricity ecosystem, the power supply side generates electricity from photovoltaic or wind energy, and the load side stores the surplus electricity, which is then fed back to the load side when power supply is needed and electricity resources are tight.

It can be said that the addition of energy storage breaks the single green power generation method of photovoltaic or wind energy, allowing it to play a "time difference" or "geographical difference" with the latter two clean energies, forming a systematic solution through a combined layout, enabling the load side to enjoy both green and stable electricity use.

03 Unifying the capillaries of industrial parks and commercial industries from a historical perspective, the traditional relationship between green and economic development is that where there is green, there is no economic development.

However, with the systematic improvement of the new energy supply structure, the mainstream relationship between green and economic development in the future will be that where there is green, there is economic development.

Of course, this is a systematic project that requires the relay of hundreds of millions of people, but there are already pioneers setting an example.

In Inner Mongolia, in the world's first zero-carbon industrial park created by EnOS in partnership with Ordos, we can see: on the energy supply side, 80% of the energy of the Ordos zero-carbon industrial park comes directly from wind power, photovoltaic, and energy storage, with the remaining 20% traded with the power grid, achieving 100% zero-carbon energy supply.

On the industrial collaboration side, the zero-carbon industrial park chooses the power battery + automotive industry, and Ordos also cooperates with leading car manufacturers to jointly innovate low-carbon, environmentally friendly, efficient, and intelligent overall transportation solutions and new service models such as "battery swap heavy trucks," replacing 330,000 diesel trucks used for coal transportation locally, reducing 30 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

On the carbon footprint management side, EnOS's Ark Energy Carbon Management Platform can track and calculate the energy consumption and carbon emissions of products produced in the park in real-time and form a "zero-carbon green code" recognized by overseas markets.

Currently, the first batch of zero-carbon battery products produced by EnOS in the Ordos zero-carbon industrial park has been input into Europe along the Eurasian Railway.

It has been discovered that in the Ordos zero-carbon industrial park, EnOS has accurately captured the breeze and light on the Inner Mongolian grasslands, transforming them into a renewable and inexhaustible treasure on the ground, jointly empowering the local green industry development and becoming a new pillar of green economy in Ordos.

In fact, the zero-carbon industrial park is a typical application scenario of EnOS's zero-carbon park source-network-load storage integrated fusion product.

It is reported that the integrated fusion product of the park's source-network-load storage is mainly aimed at high-load, high-energy-consuming electricity-using enterprises and industries, including data centers, steel, chemical, metallurgy, green hydrogen ammonia, silicon materials, batteries, fertilizers, polymer materials, etc.

The annual electricity consumption of the above industries is as high as hundreds of millions, even billions of degrees of electricity, and there is a strong demand for green electricity and reducing energy costs.

At the same time, the products of these industries are now more or less affected by CBAM or overseas carbon barriers, and there is an urgent need for low-carbon green transformation.

On September 2, EnOS's zero-carbon comprehensive energy global partner conference was held in Shanghai.

Sun Jie, the Chief Sustainability Officer of EnOS Technology Group, said that EnOS will help parks, factories, data centers, ports, and wharfs achieve zero-carbon energy supply, digital and intelligent operation management, benchmarking energy efficiency levels, and maximizing comprehensive benefits through technological accumulation in the fields of wind power, photovoltaic, energy storage, charging, batteries, green hydrogen ammonia, smart IoT, and source-network-load storage collaborative management, and bring sufficient, low-cost, and safe clean energy into people's lives.

In addition, for single buildings, small commercial and industrial parks/factories, ports and wharfs, and expressway service areas, and other small and medium load electricity usage scenarios, EnOS provides a targeted "zero-carbon park photovoltaic energy storage charging load integrated fusion product," through distributed photovoltaic on the roof of the park, commercial and industrial energy storage, charging piles, carbon management systems, park microgrid collaborative controllers, etc., to efficiently collaborate with the load side.

For example, the first wind and photovoltaic integrated smart zero-carbon logistics park in China - Nike China Smart Zero-Carbon Logistics Park, located in Taicang, Jiangsu, is one of the best practices of EnOS's zero-carbon park "photovoltaic energy storage charging load integrated fusion product."

In May 2024, the low-carbon practice of this logistics park was selected as a classic green low-carbon transformation case by the National Energy Administration.

Based on the integrated fusion product of wind, photovoltaic, energy storage, and charging provided by EnOS, different power generation equipment and load sides in the park are efficiently coupled, achieving 100% use of renewable energy electricity.

The 18GWh of green electricity generated annually not only continuously provides green electricity for the Nike logistics park every day, but the surplus electricity is also allocated to other Nike stores and offices through green rights transactions, achieving collaborative green transformation.

This not only ensures Nike's green development but also achieves green consumption for the public.

As for EnOS itself, after deploying on the power generation side and the power grid side, the "zero-carbon comprehensive energy" service business facing the user side has systematically constructed a multi-level system of "source-network-load storage energy carbon" collaborative management, completing the industrial chain of energy transmission, utilization, and management.

04 Conclusion: American writer Jeremy Rifkin once asserted that the carbon bubble is the largest economic bubble in human history, and the collapse of the fossil fuel civilization may occur between 2023 and 2030.

This is not an alarmist statement.

The collapse of the fossil fuel civilization will completely change the existing international order pattern.

China's energy revolution based on carbon neutrality is aimed at replacing carbon energy as the ultimate goal.

The realization of this goal is not achieved by the development of any single clean energy such as wind, light, hydrogen, and energy storage, but relies on a global perspective, systematic thinking, and demand-oriented targeted comprehensive layout of diversified new energy, ultimately forming an unbreakable and independent energy network.

Based on this grand goal, all industries in China should re-understand the revolutionary challenges and opportunities brought to China's industrial system by the carbon-neutral transformation from the underlying logic.

Then, unswervingly, invest in this construction.

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