Distributed photovoltaic power dominates the grid in eastern China’s Shandong Province, meeting more than 70 percent of peak demand

In the hot summer, even with the continuous increase in electricity consumption, the grid in Zaozhuang, eastern China’s Shandong province, remains stable. Interestingly, 70 percent of the energy comes from photovoltaic sources.

From 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., the power curve of distributed photovoltaic (PV) generation increased and reached 1,225.9 MW at 12:20 p.m., setting the highest daily electricity production record.

At the Shandong Zaozhuang Power Grid Control Center, the dispatcher’s screen clearly displayed the output curves of six types of power generation, including unified grid control power plants, centralized photovoltaic power plants, distributed photovoltaic power plants, local power plants, energy storage plants and wind power plants. The distributed photovoltaics curve has been rising all the time, playing a leading role in energy generation.

As the data shows, the highest output power of the photovoltaic installation that day was 1,977.47 MW, which constituted 70.44 percent of the highest load in the entire power grid that day.

In the past few years, State Grid Zaozhuang Power Supply Company has implemented the “Carbon Peak, Carbon Neutral” strategy by providing services for the development of renewable energy. As part of the special renewable energy connection service program “Clean Wind and Warm Sun”, it made every effort to create conditions for the development of renewable energy projects.

At present, the installed renewable energy capacity in Zaozhuang includes 354.7 MW of wind power, 2,651.1 MW of photovoltaic power, 281 MW of biomass power and 362 MW of energy storage, accounting for 42.27 percent of the total installed capacity and breaking the dominance of thermal power plants in Zaozhuang.

The company actively promotes the coordinated development of “renewable energy + energy storage”, making Zaozhuang the first city in Shandong Province to issue distributed photovoltaic energy storage configuration standards.

For Huadian Tengzhou Xinyuan Thermal Power Company’s 101MW/202MW energy storage project, State Grid Zaozhuang Power Supply Company has optimized and adjusted the acceptance mode to carry out stage-by-stage acceptance according to construction milestones and repair and eliminate faults at the same time. As a result, the project was the first to come online among the province’s first five peak-shaving energy storage demonstration projects.

To date, the project has collectively harnessed over 100 million kWh of renewable energy through off-peak energy storage and green energy production, equivalent to reducing coal consumption by 31,000 tonnes and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 809,000 tonnes.

Global times