After seven or eight years of rapid growth, China's wind power industry has created two "world firsts". After maintaining a 100% growth rate in the first five years, my country's installed wind power capacity reached 75 million kilowatts at the end of last year, ranking first in the world in terms of wind power installed capacity.

 

It is really encouraging that such a result has been achieved in the installed capacity of wind power in a short period of time. However, there is another "world number one" that makes people a little embarrassed, that is, my country's curtailment of wind and electricity has reached the world's number one scale. In 2011, my country's abandoned wind power reached 10 billion kWh, and in 2012 it doubled to 20 billion kWh. According to the level of thermal power generation, it means that nearly 6 million tons of coal is wasted.

 

In the past two or three years, due to the abundance of wind energy resources, the development of wind power has been highly concentrated in the "Three North" regions (Northeast China, North China and Northwest China). area. Preliminary estimates show that the average wind abandonment rate in the "Three Norths" area in 2012 was about 13%.

 

The reason for this is that the planning and construction of wind power and power grids are not synchronized, the system peak regulation is insufficient, the grid-connected technology is immature, and the local consumption capacity is insufficient.

 

However, at a deeper level, the apparent contradiction between wind power and thermal power is caused by the fact that the power management system and policy mechanism have not been adjusted. The electricity price mechanism is too rigid and lacks the design of market incentive mechanism, resulting in poor implementation of "wind power grid priority".

 

In 2012, my country's "Twelfth Five-Year Plan for Wind Power Development" put forward development goals for future wind power development. By 2015, the grid-connected installed capacity will reach 100 billion kilowatts. Up to now, the "Twelfth Five-Year" wind power project approved by the National Energy Administration has reached 8,000 kilowatts. The scale of this proposed project is sufficient to support the installed capacity to achieve the specified target in 15 years. In the next stage, the power grid will be enlarged to solve the reverse distribution of resources and markets in the "Three Norths", so that electricity can be sent out on a large scale. At the same time, it will be the top priority to continue to promote the reform of the electric power system, coordinate the interests of all parties, and implement the energy-saving dispatch management measures and the renewable energy quota system.

 

The fault of the power grid or the fault of approval?

 

Among the 9 large-scale wind power bases of 10 million kilowatts cultivated in my country, Inner Mongolia, which is a province with large wind resources in my country, like other wind power bases, has large-scale and centralized construction of wind power installed capacity, but the load is not very sufficient, and thermal power is the main power generation. But despite this, Inner Mongolia has set an example for the grid-connected consumption of wind power. The proportion of wind power in western Mongolia accounts for more than 10% of the annual electricity consumption, and the highest value even reached 30%.

 

"The reason why the acceptance of wind power in western Mongolia has reached a relatively high level is that it has received strong support and help from the State Grid in many aspects." Hou Youhua, deputy director of the transfer center of Inner Mongolia Electric Power Company, said at the "2013 Beijing International Wind Energy Conference and Exhibition" (Wind Energy Conference When sharing experience at the Entrepreneurs Forum on "Grid Integration and Consumption of Wind Power" in ), he mentioned that Mengxi had just come into contact with wind power, and the dispatching department began to pay attention to wind power at the end of 2008, when the installed capacity of wind power was about 1.3 million kilowatts. Now, after 5 years, the installed capacity has reached 10 million kilowatts. This speed is developing too fast, which has brought a lot of pressure to the Mengxi power grid.

 

"Grid-connected" and "consumption" are the most talked about words in the field of wind power at present, and in the process of solving the problem of wind power grid-connected consumption, the power grid company is an indispensable key link, and many problems are exposed. section. This "importance" makes power grid companies often the object of public criticism of restricting the development of wind power.

 

This kind of burden makes Zhang Zhengling, deputy director of the development planning department of State Grid Corporation, sometimes complain: there are many diseases, and the symptoms are manifested in the power grid, but the root of the disease is not in the power grid. In an interview with a reporter from China Sankei Shimbun, he said that there are many reasons for the abandonment of wind, including wind power technology, system conditions, problems with the coal power plan in the system, and the reason for the delay of the power grid.

 

Zhang Zhengling pointed out that, as a new resource, wind power needs to be planned, planned, constructed and operated in a coordinated manner with various factors related to it. Wind power planning should be linked with market planning, and wind power development planning should be linked with power grid planning. But unfortunately, we have not done enough in this regard in the past few years. We have a wind power plan, but there is no clear market; we have a wind power development plan but no grid plan.

 

In September 2012, the National Energy Administration issued the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan for Wind Power Development", but the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" for power grid development has been "difficult to produce". The disconnection between wind power development planning and power grid planning has caused the phenomenon of wind power curtailment and curtailment of wind power in my country in recent years.

 

Gansu is also one of the "victims" of wind curtailment and power curtailment in recent years. After a large-scale off-grid accident occurred in Jiuquan, Gansu in 2011, Gansu wind power was faced with power curtailment and large-scale wind curtailment. But after 2012, it has entered a relatively good state of development.

 

According to Wang Ningbo, director of the Wind Power Technology Center of Gansu Electric Power Company, with the construction of the 750 kV second channel power transmission and transformation project connecting Xinjiang and the northwest main grid in 2012, the wind power generation and on-grid wind power in Jiuquan area hit new highs. Among them, the maximum output of wind power reached 4.17 million kilowatts on August 14 this year, accounting for 44% of the province's electricity load at that time. The power curtailment situation in 2012 has been greatly alleviated.

 

"At present, Gansu has developed into a bottleneck stage. The problem that restricts the further development of wind power in Gansu is the lack of wind power market absorption capacity." Wang Ningbo said in an interview with a reporter from "China Sankei Shimbun" that the largest electricity load in Gansu province is 1,300 10,000 kilowatts, and the minimum electricity load is only more than 9 million to less than 10 million kilowatts. But at present, the total installed capacity of wind power and solar power plants in Gansu province has reached 8.64 million kilowatts. With such a large-scale new energy installed capacity, from the perspective of power balance, it is almost impossible to balance power and electricity in the province. Therefore, the lack of market space has become a key factor restricting the continued development of wind power in Gansu.

 

To solve this problem, it is necessary to transmit wind power to provinces with high electricity consumption. And this not only involves grid construction, but also planning issues. Large-scale transmission channel construction must be approved by the state. It is understood that, to apply for the construction of power grid projects need to apply for "road". In the past two years, the National Energy Administration has basically maintained an annual average of 25 million kilowatts of "small road" approval rhythm, and adopted the form of centralized approval. However, these projects still need to be reviewed by land, environmental impact assessment, and grid connection in the future before they can finally obtain the "big road" from the National Development and Reform Commission and enter the substantive construction stage. Therefore, the restriction of "road approval" at the wind power policy level has also been criticized.

 

Wang Ningbo said that the impact of this kind of approval on grid-connected wind power consumption is mainly reflected in the fact that the related power transmission and transformation projects that need to be approved synchronously when wind power is connected to the grid at the end of the grid, so that the wind power project is approved first, and then the wind power supporting project sent out of the grid is approved. . In fact, due to the fast construction period of wind power, but the long construction period of the power grid, there is still the problem of asynchronous construction progress even with simultaneous approval. These two asynchrony make it difficult to integrate wind power into the grid.

 

However, it is worth optimistic that in September this year, there were media reports that, according to people close to the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Development and Reform Commission was revising the "Catalogue of Government-Approved Investment Projects" in accordance with the deployment of the new round of institutional reforms of the State Council. Major reforms have been made to the management methods for approval and recordation. According to the new approval method, the "road" approval, which has long been a precondition for project approval and which has made enterprises and local governments suffer for a long time, is expected to be cancelled.

 

Before the approval of the "Road Order" was cancelled, getting the "Road Order" also meant that there was hope.

 

At the forum, Zhang Zhengling shared two pieces of good news, one of which is the ±800kV UHV DC transmission project from Jiuquan to Hunan, which has been approved by the National Energy Administration.

 

"This means that this project is about to start. For the development of wind power in Gansu, this project is the key." Wang Ningbo saw great hope for the development of wind power in Gansu. Once this transmission channel is opened, it will not only be able to solve at least 8 million kilowatts of wind power, but will also bring more market space to the development of new energy in Gansu.

 

In fact, this line is the second DC transmission project in my country. The first is the ±800kV DC transmission line project from Hami to Zhengzhou. Zhang Zhengling revealed that the State Grid has recently started commissioning this line, and it is expected to be put into operation by the end of the year.

 

Plan price or market price?

 

If it is said that how to send wind power out is the biggest problem encountered by Gansu wind power, then for Mengxi, the greater pressure is that the wind power generation quota has been used up in the fourth quarter of this year.

 

In my country's annual power generation plan, thermal power and wind power are allocated in proportion to the total power generation. As the country attaches great importance to environmental protection energy, the proportion of wind power has gradually increased in recent years. In this case, Inner Mongolia did not transfer all thermal power to wind power.

 

Hou Youhua said that the Inner Mongolia Electric Power Company sold 120 billion kWh of electricity in 2011, and this year it was about 132 billion kWh, an increase of a little over 10 billion. But in fact, there is no electricity, but all the increased electricity is given to wind power.

 

Then, "Why can't we suppress coal-fired power?" Wang Zhongying, director of the National Renewable Energy Development Center of the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, said bluntly at the forum. Every year, my country has a power plan. In western developed countries, it is high for coal-fired power to run for 3,000 hours a year. Therefore, if our country can provide 2,000 hours of coal power, then the 800 million kilowatts of thermal power installed capacity can be used for peak shaving for the 800 million kilowatts of wind power installed capacity. It's that simple, but it doesn't actually work.

 

Germany, Denmark, the United States and other countries propose that the proportion of wind power in the total electricity will reach at least 18% or more than 20% in the future, while the proportion of wind power in China is less than 2%. The biggest bottleneck restricting wind power consumption is still institutional constraints. "Wind power is not given priority to the grid, and thermal power is guaranteed. There must be a power generation plan, but it is not a situation where thermal power makes way for wind power regulation. The reform of the power system may be a very important issue." At the same time, Hou Youhua also said that energy prices are also Discuss the core issues of energy development. Under current conditions, consider how high energy costs and prices society can afford. If my country wants to build a clean power grid, the price mechanism in the future may be a very key factor to determine the success or failure of the entire power system construction.

 

So far, the price cost of renewable energy is still higher than that of coal power. From the perspective of wind power prices, conventional thermal power, especially coal-fired conventional thermal power, is still cheaper than wind power. The grid price of wind power, the domestic benchmark price is 0.51 yuan, 0.54 yuan, 0.58 yuan and 0.61 yuan four prices. However, the on-grid electricity price of traditional thermal power, such as Gansu, is only about 0.33 yuan and 0.34 yuan. Obviously, this price is still much lower than the price of 0.51 yuan.

 

However, as my country's economy gradually flattens, electricity consumption will also decrease accordingly. In addition, coal is a non-renewable energy source, and the quantity that can be mined is getting smaller and smaller, which will lead to rising coal prices, and then the cost of thermal power will continue to rise. Relatively speaking, the cost of wind power generation will decrease year by year due to the expansion of the scale of wind turbines. Therefore, the market is generally optimistic that, according to this trend, wind power will have a cost advantage, suppressing coal power generation.

 

However, for such a trend, Shi Pengfei, vice chairman of the Wind Energy Professional Committee of the China Renewable Energy Society, believes that the prospect is still uncertain. In an interview with the "China Sankei Shimbun" reporter, he said that because China has not yet established a real electricity market, it cannot bid for the Internet like the United States. my country not only has a benchmark electricity price, but the price does not change with the market. In addition, thermal power has planned electricity. And these are related to the reform of the power system, which is fundamental.

 

In Zhang Zhengling's view, the reform of the power system in the future will first require a city government, and the key to the city government is the price of electricity. Electricity system reform may start with price.

 

Recently, in order to expand renewable energy and improve environmental protection, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Notice on Adjusting the On-grid Electricity Price of Power Generation Enterprises". About 50 billion yuan.

 

It can be seen that the pressure on thermal power companies will increase, and the optimization of energy structure and "clean and renewable" energy has become the main direction of future development.

 

At the same time, it is worth noting that Wang Jun, director of the New Energy and Renewable Energy Department of the National Energy Administration, stated at the opening ceremony of the Wind Energy Conference that the National Energy Administration strongly supports the development of the wind power industry. At present, we are further improving relevant policies and will actively Promote the reform of the power system, realize the full purchase of wind power on the grid, strengthen the supervision of research and operation in areas with severe power rationing, formulate targeted solutions, and strive to introduce a quota system for renewable energy power. Try to use two to three years to basically solve the problem of power cuts.