Recently, Shenzhen issued the "Several Measures to Support the Accelerated Development of Virtual Power Plants in Shenzhen", which proposes 12 specific measures from four dimensions to promote the rapid development of virtual power plants. The document states that by 2025, the integrated development of source, grid, load and storage will achieve remarkable results, and a virtual power plant with 1 million kilowatts of adjustable capacity will be built.
With the continuous advancement of the construction of new power systems, virtual power plants are expected to usher in a golden period of rapid development.
According to the prediction of relevant institutions, by 2025, the average annual investment and construction scale of virtual power plants will reach 20 billion yuan, while the scale of the operating market will also remain above 5 billion yuan per year.
Schematic diagram of virtual power plant:
Source: Plug and Play China
The virtual power plant is not a physical power plant, it does not directly participate in the power generation process, but is an innovative energy coordination management system. Virtual power plants achieve grid balance by integrating power generation resources and adjusting part of the electricity demand. It can reduce the load during peak demand periods and enhance "power resilience", resulting in a similar effect to the generation of electricity in a physical power plant.
The core of the virtual power plant is to use advanced information and communication technology and software systems to integrate and coordinate the optimization of distributed power generation resources, such as wind power, solar energy, and energy storage equipment.
The above-mentioned related resources are physically widely distributed, and with the help of virtual power plant technology, they can be seen as a unified whole, participating in the operation of the electricity market and the grid.
The virtual power plant realizes the energy interaction with the large power grid through information communication with the control center, cloud center, power trading center, etc. It can be used as a "positive power plant" to supply power to the grid for peak shaving, or as a "negative power plant" to increase the load to cooperate with the grid valley filling. It greatly alleviates the impact of clean energy grid connection and realizes the effective absorption and utilization of clean energy.
From the perspective of the industrial chain, virtual power plants include upstream basic resources, midstream load aggregators, and downstream power demanders.
The upstream basic resources mainly include controllable load, distributed energy resources and energy storage.
The midstream link is a virtual power plant operation platform, which is responsible for integrating various distributed resources in the upstream. There are two types of resources: load aggregators and technical service providers. Among them, load aggregators can integrate scattered load resources and provide related services; Technical service providers mainly rely on their expertise in software development, model algorithms, etc., to provide technical support to load aggregators.
The downstream power demand side mainly includes power grid companies, electricity sales companies and all entities involved in electricity market-based transactions, which obtain benefits by participating in power trading, peak and frequency regulation, and demand-side response. Among them, power grid companies and electricity sales companies, as well as large users, are the main players.
On the whole, the development of virtual power plants around the world has gone through three stages: invitation, market, and cross-space autonomous scheduling.
The virtual power plant industry in mainland China is still in the initial stage of the transition from invitation to market. Since 2019, pilot demonstration projects of virtual power plants have been established in Hebei, Shenzhen, Anhui, Shanghai, Wuhan and other places, and participating in market-oriented transactions, especially spot transactions, is one of the important ways for virtual power plants to achieve profitability.
At present, the trading varieties that virtual power plants can participate in are mainly organized in a unilateral form, and in the long run, it is expected to be further expanded to bilateral negotiations, bilateral centralized bidding and other trading varieties.
The business of virtual power plants mainly includes software platforms, hardware, and operation/aggregation services.
There are many manufacturers in the upstream and downstream layout of the industrial chain. The representative suppliers of software mainly include National Energy Rixin, Dongfang Electronics, State Grid Information and Communication, Hengshi Technology, Guodian NARI, China Southern Power Grid Technology, etc.; Hardware manufacturers include Accuray, Wansheng Intelligence, Wasion Information, etc.; Aggregators include National Energy Rixin, Teruide, etc. In addition, Sifang Co., Ltd., Fuling Electric Power, Juhua Technology, etc. are also major participating manufacturers. #电力 ##财经##科技##虚拟电厂#
In the context of the new round of electricity reform, industrial policies and market demand continue to increase, virtual power plants actively participate in the power trading market as a coordinated distributed resource, and the industry is expected to usher in rapid development opportunities.
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