The National Energy Administration (NEA) of China recently issued the “Implementation Guidelines on Promoting the Integrated Development of Coal Power and New Energy” (hereinafter referred to as the “Guidelines”), which comprehensively plans the pathway framework for deep integration of coal power and new energy across overall requirements, scenario models, technical requirements, and policy mechanisms. This provides important policy guidance and an action blueprint for building a new coal-power decarbonization pathway with systemic synergy.
The Guidelines focus on the core issue of system regulation capacity, clarifying the matching relationship between the scale of new energy in integrated projects and the enhancement of coal-power unit regulation capacity. The integration projects must not encroach on the system’s existing regulation capacity space, but instead use enhanced regulation capacity to support increased new energy development. Meanwhile, the Guidelines define scenario models for coal-power and new energy integration from a systemic perspective, proposing key technical pathways for regulation capacity enhancement tailored to local conditions, and constructing specific, actionable scenario paradigms.
Five Integrated Scenario Models
Drawing on resource endowments and system operations, the Guidelines propose five typical scenario models for coal-power and new energy integration and collaborative development:
First, new energy is directly connected to nearby public coal-power units for collaborative transmission and consumption. Coal-power units, through deep peak-shaving retrofits or co-constructed energy storage and heat storage systems, bundle with nearby new energy and achieve collaborative transmission via existing coal-power transmission lines.
Second, new energy is directly connected to nearby public coal-fired combined heat and power (CHP) units for clean heating. This supports collaborative operation of new energy with public coal-power heating systems, replacing part of residential and industrial heating demand.
Third, offshore wind power is directly connected to coastal public coal-power units for collaborative transmission and consumption. Through deep peak-shaving retrofits of coal-power units and transmission system capacity expansion, offshore wind power after landing can achieve collaborative operation and transmission via coastal coal-power units and their transmission systems.
Fourth, nearby new energy is connected to self-owned coal-power units for bundled utilization. Nearby new energy can access self-owned coal-power units through the public grid or direct connection, replacing power generation and heating output from self-owned coal-power units.
Fifth, plant-site or nearby new energy is directly connected to coal-power plant energy systems for green replacement of the plant’s own energy use. Space conditions such as coal yards, main plant buildings, front-area facilities, and auxiliary facilities are used to connect plant-site distributed new energy or nearby new energy directly into the coal-power plant’s energy systems.
For the three scenario models of nearby public coal-power collaborative transmission, offshore wind via coastal coal-power collaborative transmission, and self-owned coal-power bundled utilization, the Guidelines encourage integrated projects to achieve a carbon emission reduction of 5 percent or more compared to pre-integration levels, with an ambitious target of 10 percent.
Grid-Connection Performance and Grid Management
As a project form first proposed in the “15th Five-Year Plan for Building a New Power System,” regulating the grid-connection performance and grid management of integrated projects is critical to ensuring safe and stable system operation post-grid-connection. The Guidelines emphasize system safety and stability requirements.
From the power source level, the Guidelines specify that the grid-connection performance indicators of integrated projects must comply with relevant technical standards and safety requirements, and notably emphasize that new energy in integrated projects should achieve “observable, measurable, adjustable, and controllable.” From the system level, the Guidelines specify that the transient or static stability, short-circuit current levels, and power quality of integrated projects after grid-connection must meet the relevant standard requirements for power system safety and stability.
Additionally, the Guidelines clarify the grid-connection methods and metering arrangements for coal power and new energy, requiring clear physical interfaces, responsibility boundaries, and independent electricity metering conditions, effectively avoiding confusion in rights, responsibilities, and metering among entities.
Technological Innovation and Policy Support
China has been steadily advancing coal-power flexibility retrofits, with a scale exceeding 450 million kilowatts during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period. Coal-power flexibility retrofitting has entered a deep-water phase, and traditional routes relying on boiler and steam turbine body modifications can no longer further enhance regulation capacity. The Guidelines actively support whole-chain collaboration among industry, academia, research, and application. For different scenario models, the Guidelines explicitly encourage the construction of energy storage and heat storage systems, electric heating, and electric-heat collaborative systems, achieving further regulation capacity enhancement through cross-system collaborative interaction.
To ensure effective policy implementation, the Guidelines recommend three key actions: first, carry out integrated project implementation based on local conditions, conducting detailed access scheme design and safety stability verification to avoid post-grid-connection risks to system safety; second, follow a “steady progress, orderly expansion, gradual rollout” advancement model, and promptly summarize implementation experience; third, accelerate the improvement of grid-connection management norm systems and grid-connection performance technical standards.
(Source: National Energy Administration; Wu Zhili, Chief Expert, State Grid Economic and Technology Research Institute)