Winding down the wind power curtailment in China: What made the difference?

Hao Chen, Jiachuan Chen, Guoyi Han and Qi Cui

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2022, vol. 167, issue C

Abstract: The carbon neutrality goal requires significant acceleration of the renewable energy transition. In China, this acceleration is hampered because of the concerns regarding the recent high-rate wind power curtailment. However, post-2016, wind power curtailment shows notable reductions. Therefore, it is vital to understand the fundamental factors driving such improvements, the curtailment reduction patterns across the countries and key regions, the experiences from the regional heterogeneity of curtailment reductions, and the policy implications available to strengthen wind power curtailment mitigation strategies in the short and long term to accelerate China's clean energy transition. This study constructs an evaluation framework based on the logarithmic mean Divisia index approach to investigate these concerns. Furthermore, it reveals that the eminent contributors at the national scale are local power demand, power exports, and power structures. However, the regional factor patterns oscillate significantly. In northwest China, power transmission is vital to reduce wind power curtailment. In north China, thermal power remains dominant because of its importance to national energy security, impeding its curtailment. Northeast China implements the peak-shaving auxiliary service market, promoting the power grid's capability to consume more local wind power. The fundamental settlement of the curtailment issue calls for market-oriented energy structure reforms to ensure sustainable low-carbon development. This study explains the essence of China's renewable energy development and seeks reliable paths to accelerate wind power integration with policy measures and technical transformations to enhance the adaptability of the power grid system.

Keywords: Decarbonization; Renewable penetration; Carbon neutrality; Wind power curtailment; LMDI decomposition; Attribution analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032122006141
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:167:y:2022:i:c:s1364032122006141

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2022.112725

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().