Can energy storage become the mainstay?
Energy storage is considered to be an indispensable key support for the new power system. Although the technology of pumped storage is mature, after all, it has high site requirements, limited resources, and faces the problem of unsatisfactory price mechanism and slow development. In addition, new types of energy storage are expected to be high. The government is publicly seeking opinions on the guidance for the development of new energy storage, and plans to achieve an installed capacity of more than 30 million kilowatts by 2025, and to achieve full market-oriented development by 2030. State Grid Energy Research Institute predicts that my country’s new energy storage will grow rapidly after 2030, and the installed capacity will reach 420 million kilowatts in 2060. More experts boldly predict that the future of new energy storage will exceed 1 billion kilowatts. For new energy storage with a scale of only 2.1 million kilowatts as of 2019, the stage is large enough and the prospects are bright enough. However, the road to energy storage is still quite long, and there are still many problems to be solved and many difficulties to overcome.
How to let users do their best?
Under the new power system, power users are no longer pure and passive users, but may also be energy producers and participants in power balance, and their roles, positioning, and functions are deeply adjusted. The friendly access of household photovoltaics and other users to produce energy is already a commonplace problem, and the new situation is that after scale up, the quantity changes to the qualitative change. Demand-side response has been effectively practiced in many places, changing the rigidity and coldness of demand management and orderly use of electricity. However, the scope of participation, the depth of implementation, and the strength of incentives are not enough. The source of subsidy funds is slightly simple and cost-sharing The mechanism is not yet mature. How to use market-oriented economic means and price mechanisms to better mobilize users’ enthusiasm for participating in power balance, including peak-shift power consumption and electric vehicle charging and discharging, is a topic that needs urgent research.
How should the power reform be blessed?
The reform of the electric power system is crucial to the construction of a new power system, and some media even claim that accelerating the construction of the power market is its breakthrough. Since the launch of the new round of power system reform in 2015, the scale of market-oriented electricity trading has continued to expand, and power generation companies have gradually deepened market competition based on the reduction of planned electricity. The grid revenue model has changed from price difference to cost plus reasonable income, which has changed to a large extent. The existing power ecology. However, according to the current power market design, new energy is in the priority power generation range, and guaranteed acquisition is still the mainstream perception, which is considered to limit the existence of market competition. New energy is making great strides towards the main energy, the power market mechanism needs to be adjusted and perfected, especially the relatively independent and detached auxiliary service market needs more overall consideration. The withdrawal of traditional power generation products also needs to be reformed to form a market-oriented road, and administrative measures should be avoided as much as possible.
Are you wary of resource grabbing?
When oil and gas companies list new energy as an important business sector and are determined to transition to new energy, the industry may be able to deeply feel the potential of the new energy field to land on the beach. The horse racing enclosure in the power sector was once a weird phenomenon that has received widespread attention. Whether it will make a comeback or even more serious needs to be observed and vigilant. The large-scale clean energy bases with a clear outline of the “14th Five-Year Plan” and 2035 long-term goals will undoubtedly play a role of four pillars and eight pillars in the implementation of the “dual carbon” goal and the construction of a new power system. Under the market competition environment, its high-quality resources will naturally be favored and sought after by many parties. How can we achieve efficient and reasonable allocation of resources and realize the optimal development of social costs? Is there no alternative to the construction of a clean energy base in a river basin featuring the complementarity of wind power, solar power and hydropower?
What to do if you face rising electricity bills?
After the ultra-high-speed development in recent years, my country’s wind power and solar power generation have begun to enter the era of parity. Offshore wind power that started later and has a higher cost will no longer enjoy central subsidies. It is expected that the cost of wind and solar power generation will be further reduced. But this is far from the whole cost, and it does not mean that the cost of the system will drop. As a pioneer in the global energy transition and one of the leaders in the development of renewable energy, Germany has raised electricity prices due to the increase in the proportion of renewable energy power generation. This has caused controversy from all walks of life. According to preliminary calculations by the State Grid Energy Research Institute, after the penetration rate of new energy electricity exceeds 15%, the system cost will enter the critical point of rapid growth. It is expected that in 2025 it will be 2.3 times that in 2020. my country’s electricity prices continue to be at a low level, and in recent years, market-oriented or administrative measures have been taken to reduce electricity prices. The contradiction between rising costs and the demand for low electricity prices within the visible range in the future requires early research to resolve measures.
