① The agency pointed out that flexible resource construction includes two categories: supply-side and demand-side. Virtual power plants are an effective measure to resolve time mismatches on the demand side. ② Shanxi, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places have successively introduced special virtual power plant policies, and virtual power plants are expected to usher in a period of rapid development.
China's wind power and photovoltaic industries are developing rapidly, and the share of power generation and installed capacity is increasing year by year, which in turn drives the flexibility of the power system to adjust resource requirements. The agency pointed out that flexible resource construction includes two major categories: supply-side and demand-side. Virtual power plants are an effective measure to resolve time mismatches on the demand side.
In September 2023, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Energy Administration issued the “Basic Rules for the Electricity Spot Market (Trial)” to include new types of entities such as energy storage and virtual power plants in market transactions. At the provincial and municipal levels, Shanxi, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places have successively introduced special virtual power plant policies, and virtual power plants are expected to usher in a period of rapid development. China Merchants Securities pointed out that in the two directions of power scheduling and the electricity market, AI empowering virtual power plants is an excellent implementation scenario. A virtual power plant is an intelligent energy management system that can aggregate distributed adjustable resources in the power grid to participate in power market transactions as a “virtual” power plant. It requires connecting multiple links of load storage in the source network, formulating a more economical and reasonable power distribution plan based on data information such as power generation, electricity consumption, electricity price, etc., making reasonable arrangements for power production according to actual conditions and electricity usage rules, and intelligently controlling the load side. AI access is expected to greatly improve analysis reliability and response speed in these areas.
According to the Finance Federation's theme library, among the relevant listed companies:
On the basis of participating in the construction of virtual power plants in Hunan, Northern Hebei and other provinces, Hengshi Technology is already actively planning to lay out virtual power plant businesses in other provinces.
Canaan Intelligence's “full-chain digital energy platform” realizes functions such as collection, storage, analysis, and mining of various energy data, satisfies the full chain management and scheduling of energy supply, storage, and load control, and can support virtual power plant application scenarios.