China looks to ramp up renewables, manage demand in power upgrade plan
BEIJING, Aug 6 (Reuters) - China's state planner unveiled details on Tuesday of a three-year plan to upgrade the power system as the country seeks to ramp up renewables and ease the strain of rising power demand on the national grid.
The 2024-2027 plan launched by the National Reform and Development Commission aims to help China meet its goal of reaching a peak in carbon emissions before 2030 and includes guidance on the upgrading of transmission and distribution systems, the planning body said.
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The plan sets targets for demand response, the balancing of demands placed on power grids, by encouraging consumers to shift their electricity usage away from peak times - a necessity underscored by record-breaking heat that has strained grids in eastern China in recent days.
Demand response capacity should reach 5% of the maximum electric load, according to the plan. It also for the first time sets a more ambitious goal for demand response to reach 10% of maximum load in certain areas, though it did not specify which areas.
The plan focuses on building a more flexible power grid to better manage the transition to intermittent renewables, said Xuewan Chen, energy transition analyst at LSEG.
But a crucial aspect not mentioned in the document was power market reform and the creation of a competitive power market to more effectively allocate resources, she said.
Currently, transactions are mostly governed by medium- and long-term contracts.
More renewable power should be used in China's long-distance power transmission projects, which typically send electricity from large plants in western China to cities in the east of the country, the NDRC plan said.
It also called for creating standards for next-generation coal-fired power, reducing the emissions from coal power plants, and blending coal with lower-carbon fuels.
Other plans include improving the country's electric vehicle charging infrastructure, piloting new grid scheduling plans in areas with heavy EV charging demand, and upgrading energy storage that had been installed at renewable power plants but not effectively utilised.
(Reporting by Colleen Howe; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Helen Popper and Conor Humphries)