Last year’s power outage in the Northeast was similar, where extreme weather caused wind power output in the Northeast to plummet, causing a temporary shortage of electricity.
Even the United States, known as the “world’s number one developed country”, was not spared.
Last year, Texas also encountered extremely cold weather, and its wind power generation plummeted by 30%. The Texas power grid collapsed directly, leaving more than 4 million people without electricity.
“The world is burning and we need a renewable energy revolution!”
Under the continuous warming of the global climate, the Secretary-General of the United Nations over there is eagerly calling on everyone to slip away.Develop clean energy.
But here wind power, hydropower, photovoltaicThe instability of new energy,And let Sichuan-Chongqing, Northeast, Dezhou and other extremePower outages occur frequently.
Green environmental protection and the stability of the power supply system are thus opposed.
It can only be said that being a human being, especially being a human being, is really hard.
But recently, a concept called “virtual power plants” has been hyped up.
It is said to be able to take into account both new energy and electricity stability, and it is a good medicine from a medicine to a disease.
It can make us hold our heads high and restore the majesty of earthlings.
Whether there is a bad effect or not, I dare not draw a conclusion. Anyway, the relevant stocks were hyped in the capital market first.
The so-called “virtual power plant index” has also risen more or less recently, and it looks like a new outlet.
And today, the poor reviewer is going to talk to everyone about the new thing “virtual power plant”, what is the sacredness of it?
First of all, we must sweep a blind spot for everyone.
A virtual power plant is not a real power plant, nor is it a digital collection of power plants in the metaverse NFT…
but aSmart grid technology for “generating functions”.
Its “power generation function” is reflected in the ability to coordinate and unify all parties.
like a dispatcher,Through reasonable command,So as to achieve the “power generation” function.
Just relying on the above few sentences, most of the poor friends should still be in the fog.
This is because knowingHow to dispatch a virtual power plant beforeWe also have to know first who is scheduled.
Simply put, they are: those that generate electricity, those that store electricity, and those that use electricity.
The reason for the need for scheduling,Because the contradiction between them is not small.
Not to mention extreme situations such as Sichuan-Chongqing, Northeast China, and Dezhou. They do not deal with each other just in ordinary days.
Because humans are really bad at storing electricity, the vast majority of electricity is“Shoot out of the box”of.
In the past, the stability and controllability of thermal power generation commonly used in the past, the “snap-to-use” model is actually relatively reliable. That’s it.
But for new energy sources, stability is indeed a problem, because they will meet the wrong people at the wrong time.
For example, when there is a small peak of electricity consumption around 10 o’clock in the evening, the photovoltaic can’t use much power.
At the small peak of electricity consumption around twelve o’clock at noon, the wind did not listen to people’s orders, and there was no way to generate more electricity at this time on time.
I can’t control my electricity from the sky, you sayDisasternot uncomfortable…
Therefore, although new energy is now a big hit, in order to stabilize the power grid, the old friend of thermal power is still indispensable.
Otherwise, what would you do if wind power, hydropower, and photovoltaics all stopped on a windless and dry night?
But this is a test of the peak shaving ability of thermal power units.
That is to say, in order to ensure the needs of users, when the new energy power is insufficient,The thermal power station should be on full power.
In order to protect the environment, after wind, water and light,Thermal power must immediately make room for new energy power.
It may be easy to say, but it is actually very difficult for thermal power plants to perform deep peak shaving by 30% up and down.
The front foot wants you to step on the accelerator, the rear foot wants you to brake quickly, the safety and service life of the generator setwill be severely tested.
As a result, thermal power stations in many places have insufficient “driving” technology. In order to ensure electricity consumption, they have to abandon both wind and light.
For example, the clean energy industry base in Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, has built a photovoltaic project of 1.6 million kilowatts…
However, it was abandoned for a year last year because of its poor peak shaving ability.
In 2016, when the related problems were the most serious, 40% of wind power in some places was directly abandoned after it was sent out.
In May of this year, the wind abandonment rate in Gansu was 18.3%, and that in Qinghai Province was 16.3%.
The electricity here was abandoned, and after a few months, there was a shortage of electricity there…
It can only be said that the time-space and supply-demand mismatch of power resources is really difficult.
Therefore, strengthening the peak shaving capability of thermal power plants is the most direct solution.
In addition to enhancing the acceleration and braking capabilities of the thermal power station, saving electricity is another combined skill.
Pumped water energy storage is actually quite mature, but the current popular fried chicken has to have higher conversion efficiency, and has entered the commercialization stage of electrochemical energy storage.
Everyone’s electric vehicles, in the future, may be able to store electricity when there is a lot of electricity, and discharge when there is a shortage of electricity, becoming a power storage network all over the place.
Having said so much, whether it is to coordinate the power generation of wind power, hydropower, photovoltaic, thermal power, or how much electricity the batteries need to store, there is always a need for a unified system to coordinate…
Yes, the system that coordinates it all is actually a “virtual power plant”.
For example, a virtual power plant using AI algorithms can predict the weather and tell the thermal power plant in advance whether it should sprint or brake.
It can also tell which side needs to store electricity and which side needs to discharge.
More importantly, the “virtual power plant” will also bring those of us who use electricity into the network.
Ordinary people may still be able to make money from virtual power plants.
As mentioned above, using your own electric car or other equipment to store electricity is one of the ways to make money.
The logic behind it is actually to store electricity when there is a lot of electricity, and then sell the stored electricity to a virtual power plant at a high price when the electricity is not enough.
For example, the PowerWall launched by Musk is a similar power storage product.
Of course, Musk didn’t really build a power plant, but just let everyone’s photovoltaics and batteries on the roof connect to the grid, so as to participate in the scheduling of the grid.
Another way to make money is to participate in the scheduling of virtual power plants.
After all, whether it is peak shaving of thermal power plants or energy storage, all efforts are made in open source.
With virtual power plants, throttling can actually be more convenient.
As a simple example, the virtual power plant has predicted that there may be a peak in power consumption next week, and the power supply may be very tight.
Then the virtual power plant and may give you a week’s notice, “begging” you to use less electricity next week…
If you successfully respond to the “please” and do use less electricity, the power plant will give you a subsidy of a few dollars per kilowatt-hour.
The more urgently you “beg” (say you need to save electricity tonight), the higher the subsidy you get.
Some users may be able to get hundreds of thousands of subsidized income a month just by responding to the “appeal” to use less electricity.
There are also electricity tigers such as shopping malls, which can also be “micro-manipulated” by virtual power plants.
say 16 degreesair conditionerAfter driving for three hours, I secretly raised the temperature to more than 20 degrees for an hour, and the body sensation was not much worse…
But if tens of thousands of shopping malls do this, they can save a lot of electricity unknowingly.
The macro is in charge of the overall situation, and the details are insanely micro-manipulated. In this way, the virtual power plant is crazy to “generate”.
It is these operations of the virtual power plant that make the task of “peak shaving and valley filling” a lot easier for the power system.
State Grid has done calculations. If it is handed over to thermal power plants to increase or reduce the peak load by 5%, it will cost at least 400 billion yuan, but for the same effect, the cost of virtual power plants is only 50 billion yuan…
Cheap and effective, it is no wonder that virtual power plants are favored.
In China, there are actually many attempts at virtual power plants.
For example, the Shanghai Virtual Power Plant has covered more than 200 large-scale commercial buildings, with a cumulative dispatch volume of nearly 30 trillion kWh.
The Shenzhen virtual power plant has also become the first case in China to dispatch user loads and participate in the profit of the electricity spot market.
But on the other hand, the problems of virtual power plants can be seen by anyone with a discerning eye.
One is that the current dispatch volume of virtual power plants is very low. At present, relatively large virtual power plants, that is, 10 companies or institutions are connected…
Compared with the big plate in the whole country, it is equivalent to getting nine.hot pota hair on it,
It is not one step or two steps away from truly solving the power problem in a region.
Moreover, the price of electricity is likely to be different every day or even every hour, and the common people do not like such fluctuations.
In addition, the so-called new energy vehicle storage power is connected to the network, and the continuous charging and discharging will cause great damage to the battery life. How many people are willing to do this for the income of selling electricity?
Do you have to buy other home energy storage equipment to make money from selling electricity on the grid?
So in general, the virtual power plant has a good vision and a business model that makes sense, but there is still a long way to go before it is truly mature.
Of course, no matter whether the virtual power plant is the final answer to the problem, I believe that most of the poor friends, like the poor reviewers, sincerely hope that every kilowatt-hour of electricity in the future can be used to the fullest.
Let those things like power shortages and power cuts become history.