One of the core issues of electricity reform is the separation of government and enterprises.
The vast majority of the functions originally undertaken by the power grid enterprises have been assigned to the first place, and there is no governance ability for the time being, and then the power grid enterprises will manage it by means of authorization, such as the meter metering management is the business of the Quality Supervision Bureau, and most of the functions are currently exercised by the power grid enterprise metering center. So who is in charge of the virtual power plant?In fact, it also involves some fundamental content of virtual power plants. Clause.
1. What is the management object of the virtual power plant?
Many people's first reaction is to manage the power plant. The provincial dispatching department of the power grid enterprise also thinks so, since it is a power plant, it should be regulated and managed. As a result, most of China's virtual power plant management platforms and projects are organized and implemented by provincial governments. However, the virtual power plant is a virtualized management of "load-side resources", which has the following characteristics: First, the voltage level is inevitably low, and most of them are below 220kV, so it raises the latter problem: the demarcation of professional jurisdiction boundaries within the power grid (we will discuss it later);Second, although a virtual power plant is called a power plant, it is far from a physical power plant in terms of management boundary, management scope, management content, and management mode. The connotation of virtual power plant is the aggregation and trading of load-side adjustable resources, that is, the management of load-side power resources. Clause.
2. Who will manage the virtual power plant?
The management of centralized thermal power plants, the construction and operation are managed by power generation enterprises, the grid-connected dispatch is managed by provincial dispatching, and the trading of electricity is mainly organized through the electricity market, and at the same time subject to the supervision and management of the energy regulatory department. Therefore, management can be divided into four roles: construction and operation, grid-connected scheduling, transaction organizer, and supervision and management.
Virtual power plants are different from traditional power plants in all four aspects.
1. Construction and operation partyAs long as there is a load-side resource development capability, it can become the construction and operation party of the virtual power plant, such as the user load manager (power users, electricity sales companies, third-party energy-saving companies, third-party property companies, etc.), and the load-side non-load resource management party (charging piles, energy storage and other construction and operation units).
2. Grid-connected dispatcherThe grid-connected voltage level of load-side resources is mostly lower than 220kv, and most of them belong to the distribution network, while the provincial dispatch generally manages the transmission network nodes of 220kv and above voltage levels, so the virtual power plant is generally managed by the distribution network dispatching and power marketing professionals. Of course, this also involves the professional boundaries of distribution and marketing, and the current business trend of "operation and distribution through" is more inclined to integrate the business of these three professional departments, and even the marketing department has a greater say in it.
The virtual power plant platform built by some municipal power supply companies is dominated by the marketing department, and its construction style and ideas are obviously different from the virtual power plant platform led by the provincial commission. 3. Transaction organizers
The virtual power plant platform led by the provincial dispatch is based on the provincial centralized auxiliary service market. At present, the domestic ancillary service market is more designed with the goal of safe operation and dispatching of transmission grids, and the varieties traded are relatively limited. In the case that the electric energy market, especially the spot market, is not yet mature, the maturity of the ancillary service market is also very low, and the boundary between the ancillary service market and the electric energy market is still blurred in some places.
As a virtual resource product in the distribution and consumption of electricity, most of the virtual power plants cannot meet the transaction threshold of the provincial centralized auxiliary service market. For example, capacity, some ancillary services markets are 20MW to get startedFor example, the technical requirements for access must have a provincial real-time scheduling interfaceThere is also a requirement for the speed of response, and the provincial regulation is more inclined to purchase resources with rapid frequency modulation capabilities due to the security needs of the power grid, such as large-scale energy storage resources (pumped storage or electrochemical energy storage) on the source grid side. This is related to the innate "low scattered and small" resource management capability of virtual power plants, that is, the response speed is very low (generally only has the ability of day-ahead or intra-day peak regulation, and rarely has the ability of frequency regulation).Extremely dispersed resources (distributed in medium and low voltage distribution networks and user distribution networks, with hundreds or thousands of sites);The monomer capacity is small.
Therefore, virtual power plants focus more on the power balance at the medium and low voltage distribution network level, rather than the balance service of provincial, centralized and transmission grids.
At present, the domestic ancillary service market is not mature enough to carry out distribution network, or even low-voltage distribution network ancillary service product transactions, and even the original design intention of the ancillary service market is not this. Therefore, the dilemma of the development of domestic virtual power plants lies in this. At present, the ancillary service market organized by the provincial government organization does not provide sufficient trading opportunities for the "low-scattered and small" resources of virtual power plants, nor does it have sufficient returns. Instead, we can only retreat to incentives through "orderly electricity subsidies".
Personally, I believe that it is necessary to consider the systemic design of the electricity market, such as the combination of centralized trading markets (on-exchange trading) and decentralized trading markets (over-the-counter trading).
As for some virtual power plant management platforms in China, they are more of display functions, and do not have the ability to dispatch real "virtualized" resources, let alone marketization. It even confuses the boundaries between the construction and operation of resources and the organization of transactions. You can't be a referee and an athlete at the same time.
4. Supervise and manage the partyIf the construction and operation party is a securities institution, and the trading organization is the stock exchange, then the supervision and management party is the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
The supervision and management of market transactions, as well as the supervision of electricity consumption on the load side, are essentially the best functions.
For example, orderly electricity consumption management is the most important responsibility, and the power grid is authorized to exercise (or partially exercise) the relevant management power on behalf of the power grid.
With the construction of the electricity market, under normal circumstances (non-force majeure situations, such as natural disasters, wars, major failures), the orderly electricity management responsibilities under the market operation state should gradually give way to the market, so that the signal can play the baton of orderly electricity consumption, and the market can replace subsidies. Therefore, the subsidized virtual power plant operation mode will never be the mainstream in the future. In the name of the first place, through the power marketing department to build the "load management center", the essence of which I think is in the non-market state, the first administrative management means, is a kind of abnormal management. Taking the virtual power plant as a point, we can actually see too much in the process of electricity marketization, and the multilateral interaction process between the power grid, the market, and other market participants, which is also a very interesting perspective.
If you say something wrong, please correct me. **: Fisheye looks at the electricity reform