How does a "virtual power plant" work without building a factory or burning a gram of coal?

As the installed capacity of new energy sources such as wind power and photovoltaics continues to increase, a new role playing an important regulatory role in the new power grid - "virtual power plant" - has also emerged. So what exactly is a virtual power plant? How does it work?

The "power plant" doesn't generate electricity? Revealing the true identity of the “virtual power plant”

What is the role of virtual power plant? Its core function is: adjustment! It gathers various resources of the new power grid, gathers less into more, and gathers sand into towers, tapping considerable regulatory potential.

Let’s talk about the power generation end first. Wind power and photovoltaic power both depend on the weather. For example, photovoltaic power generation is high when the sunlight is strong at noon, but power generation drops in the morning and evening; on cloudy days, when a cloud passes by, power generation will fluctuate significantly.

Looking at the electricity consumption end, electricity demand has concentrated peak periods and flat valley periods. For example, in Hangzhou, the maximum load of the power grid reached nearly 25 million kilowatts this summer. If calculated based on the peak value, Hangzhou still needs to build 12 more large-scale substations, with a total investment of nearly 10 billion yuan. But in a year, peak hours only last for dozens of hours. These facilities sit idle most of the time and are clearly not cost-effective.

Therefore, during peak power generation times, the virtual power plant must use and store the electricity generated by wind power and photovoltaic power. During peak times of electricity consumption, the stored electricity must be released in time to support electricity demand.

Regarding virtual power plants, there are three more keywords.

The first keyword is "fast".

First of all, you have to respond quickly, which does not rely on human gaze. The dispatch assistant of the State Grid Hangzhou Virtual Power Plant is this large artificial intelligence model "Hangdian Optical Engine". It can process millions of accessed data in seconds, predict changes in power demand in real time, and quickly provide solutions.

The second key word is "stable".

At present, all walks of life have increasingly higher requirements for power supply stability, and new energy sources are highly volatile. Therefore, an important task of the virtual power plant is to balance the new power grid and turn fluctuations into stability.

The third key word is "live".

In addition to wind power, photovoltaics and energy storage, virtual power plants have also brought office buildings, shopping malls, new energy vehicles and other small partners into the circle of friends. For example, it allows a building's air conditioner to be turned up a degree or two. One building alone cannot save much electricity, but hundreds of buildings combined can be as large as a medium-sized power plant. To this end, Hangzhou has also built an "electricity market" to flexibly use market mechanisms to make the circle of friends more active.

Without building a factory or burning a gram of coal, the virtual power plant activates tens of millions of kilowatts of power resources and becomes an indispensable regulator of the new power grid.