Gansu province of energy is in trouble and entangled in thermal power industry

At the foot of Qilian Snow Mountain is the vast Gobi Desert where dozens of wind farms are scattered. The river is setting in motion and it is reflected in the snow-white wind turbine. It is like a magnificent dream.

For Gansu Province, its dream is to develop the electric power industry and become a major province of energy, so as to get rid of the long-standing situation in the national economy. In 2010, the General Office of the State Council promulgated the "Several Opinions on Further Supporting the Economic and Social Development of Gansu Province," which clearly stated that it is necessary to "proactively build two energy bases in eastern and western Hebei."

In early 2011, Shi Jun, vice governor of Gansu Province, publicly stated that during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, the average annual growth of electricity sales in Gansu reached 15.4%, and by 2015, the province’s annual electricity sales will reach 150 billion kWh.

However, during an interview in Gansu, the reporter found that whether it is the problem of the wind power industry's abandonment of wind power, the issue of low-voltage traversing technology, or the power coal supply and pollution problems in the thermal power industry, Gansu is testing the "energy province" target.

Entangled in the thermal power industry, Shi Jun said in an interview that it is expected that by the end of the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan”, the total installed capacity of Gansu Electric Power will increase to more than 55 million kilowatts, of which more than 17 million kilowatts will be installed for wind power and 1.3 million kilowatts for solar power. It is estimated that by 2015, Gansu Power Grid will have more than 35,000 kilometers of 110 kilovolt and above lines and will have a capacity of more than 85 million kVA. By then, the status of Gansu Power Grid in the northwest power grid will be further highlighted.

In fact, since the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" to develop the power industry, the industry has occupied a very important position in the entire Gansu economy. According to an official from the Gansu Provincial Commission for Industry and Information Technology, the industrial output value of Gansu Province in 2010 was 160 billion yuan, of which the power industry accounted for about 12%, and this proportion will further increase in 2011.

According to the above-mentioned officials, at present, it is initially estimated that the power generation in Gansu Province will reach 90 billion kWh in 2011, which has reached 76 billion kWh in the first three quarters. Considering plant power consumption and power loss, the actual power supply is 65 billion kWh. In the first three quarters of actual electricity supply in Gansu Province, not all electricity was consumed in the province, of which electricity consumption in the province was 54 billion kWh, and another 11 billion kWh of electricity was sent outside the province. Relying on the national strategy of “West Power Transmission to the East”, Gansu Province has taken the power industry as an important bargaining chip for the economy. As Shi Jun said, Gansu Province has a unique resource advantage in the development of the electric power industry, that is, wind energy and solar energy resources are relatively abundant, but the reporter observed that in the entire Gansu power industry, the proportion of the above two resources is still very small. The installed capacity of the wind power industry has accounted for nearly 30% of the total installed capacity in Gansu Province, but the actual power generation capacity is less than 10%.

At present, the electricity supply in Gansu Province still relies mainly on the thermal power industry. The data provided by the officials of the Gansu Industrial and Information Technology Commission to reporters showed that the province's thermal power enterprises had a power supply of 59.2 billion kWh in 2010, which exceeded 70% of the total power supply in the province. The reporter also learned that there are already nearly 20 thermal power plants in operation in Gansu.

As far as the development of thermal power industry is concerned, Gansu Province has no advantage. The supply of coal in the province is far from satisfying the demand. Wang Fuqiang, general manager of Lanzhou Coal Emergency Reserve Logistics Center, told reporters: “The coal in Gansu Province can be self-sufficient, or something that was done five years ago.”

According to the Gansu Provincial Commission of Industry and Information Technology, the province’s coal consumption in 2011 was 40 million tons, which was 10 million tons more than in 2010. However, the supply of coal mines in the province is only 18 million tons, and the remaining 22 million tons must be Other provinces were transferred in. The main sources are Xinjiang and Ningxia.

Lin Boqiang, director of the China Energy Economic Research Center at Xiamen University, told reporters that the reason for implementing the “West-to-East Power Transmission” strategy is to make full use of the coal resources in the western region and build more coal pit power plants to reduce the cost of thermal power companies. And to increase the supply of electric coal, but in the case of Gansu, there is no obvious resource advantage.

A business owner who transported coal from Xinjiang to Gansu told reporters that the price of a ton of electric coal in the pit is 50 yuan. However, when it comes to Gansu, it costs more than 600 yuan. The final purchase price of local thermal power plants may reach 800-1000 yuan. .

The debate over black GDP as a non-clean energy, the construction of thermal power plants will inevitably bring about pollution problems. Officials of the Gansu Provincial Commission of Industry and Information Technology did not deny, but the official said that pollution is indeed an objective problem. This is determined by the thermal power of the thermal power plant. However, there must be a time between the development of the economy and the reduction of carbon emissions. With some choices, the Gansu provincial government still encourages large-scale power generation companies to build thermal power plants in the province.

Obviously, the GDP created by thermal power companies is quite attractive. Calculated according to nearly 60 billion kWh of electricity supply in 2010, the final selling price is about 18 billion yuan. According to the 35% industrial added value rate, the industrial added value of this item is roughly 6.3 billion yuan.

In fact, while local governments are pursuing GDP, thermal power companies have no profit margins. People familiar with Gansu's power industry told the reporter that according to the calculation of coal consumption of 320-350 grams of thermal power for each thermal power generation, the current cost of coal for Gansu thermal power plants will need 3 gross/kWh, which is not the depreciation and maintenance of machines. , management costs, financial costs and so on. At present, the on-grid tariff in Gansu is only around 3毛3分/度. From this point of view, the local thermal power plants have already suffered heavy losses.

According to joint statistics of China's power companies, Huaneng, Datang, Huadian, Guodian, and China Power Investment Corp.’s five major power generation groups recorded a loss of 15.38 billion yuan in thermal power production in the first half of 2011, a year-on-year increase of 9.52 billion yuan. As coal prices continue to rise, the losses of power generation companies will continue to increase.

In addition to the corporate profits, the coal transportation capacity is also testing the thermal power companies in Gansu. The reporter learned that the large number of coal resources entering the province has brought great pressure on the traffic in Gansu Province. Although the Lanzhou Railway Bureau has done its best to guarantee the coal transportation in Gansu Province, there are still 15 million tons of coal that needs to be entered from other roads. In fact, only 5 million tons of railways are directly delivered, and other coals need to be transported to the province.

Although there is a huge market space, the current days for Gansu coal transportation companies are not good. "It doesn't matter that we don't get wagons at all." Mr. Li, who is making coal shipments, told reporters that the period from buying coal to shipping should be at least 1 month.

At the same time, since Xinjiang Province has already increased the work load limit for trucks in 2011, the cost of coal transportation in 2011 has also increased significantly. From the coal mines in Hami, Xinjiang, to the short distance of 800 kilometers in Gansu Yumen Coal Mine, the transportation cost of one ton of electric coal has increased from 210 yuan in 2010 to 289 yuan in 2011.

In addition, Mr. Li also told reporters that although the reserve of coal is in short supply, the thermal power plants in Gansu Province still follow the habits of the past, that is, the payment cycle is too long, and some of the pressure on the purchase price even reaches tens of millions of yuan, making the scale small coal. Transport companies can not eat too much. Therefore, even if the province's coal demand is strong, local coal companies are still willing to transport coal to other provinces.

Industry insiders told reporters that under the pressure of cost and supply, coal-fired power companies have been very common in the use of low-grade coal. Lin Boqiang expressed his approval. Lin told reporters that in the event that coal resources, capacity, and coal consumption do not match, in order to ensure the normal operation of thermal power plants, in addition to the development of pit power plants, there is an urgent need to resolve the coal-electricity linkage mechanism.

Low-voltage crossing threshold With the world-class wind energy resources, the Gobi Desert in Jiuquan City, Gansu Province is known as the “World Wind”.

"Jiuquan can be used as a wind farm construction area of ​​47,000 square kilometers, wind resources reserves of about 210 million kilowatts, the amount of 80 million kilowatts can be developed." Gansu Province Jiuquan Energy Bureau Director Wu Sheng Xue told the media. As an important part of the "energy province" strategy, the development of the Jiuquan wind power industry has accelerated since 2008.

On April 18, 2008, the National Development and Reform Commission reviewed and approved the "Report on the Planning of a Million Kilowatt-class Wind Power Base in Jiuquan, Jiuquan, Gansu Province." According to the plan, the total installed capacity of 10 million kilowatt-class wind power bases in Jiuquan, Gansu Province is planned to be 12.71 million kilowatts, of which: by the end of 2010, the planned installed capacity is 5.16 million kilowatts, and the planned installed capacity by the end of 2015 is 12.71 million kilowatts.

In fact, the development of Jiuquan wind power has exceeded the planning speed. According to information provided to reporters by the two major wind power bases in Jiuquan, Yumen City (county-level city) and Guazhou County, as of the end of 2010, the total installed capacity of wind power industry in Yumen City was 1.7 million kilowatts, while the installed capacity of wind power in Guazhou County was 3.8 million kilowatts, the overall installed capacity has reached 5.5 million kilowatts.

However, the many accidents that occurred at the beginning of 2011 caused a heavy blow to the Jiuquan wind power industry. On February 24th, CLP Investment Gansu Jiuquan Wind Power Base Guazhou Ganhekou No. 6 wind farm 35 kV feeder cable cabinet underside of the cable head C phase casing grounding breakdown. After 11 seconds, it evolved into a three-phase short-circuit fault, and the 330 kV bus voltage in Dunhuang changed instantly to 272 kV. Subsequently, the wind farm fan off the net and affected 298 wind turbines in 10 other wind farms in the Guazhou region. On April 17, it was also Guazhou, and another accident occurred.

China National Hydroelectric (4.63, -0.04, -0.86%) Consultant Group Cheng Hong, deputy director of the Integrated Department of Wind Power Guazhou Co., Ltd., told reporters that the company's wind farms did experience off-grid, which was mainly reflected in the reduction of wind turbine load.

In the process of power grid operation, the off-grid accident will pose a great threat to the security of the power grid. In May, the SERC notified the three-times network offenders three times and believed that the accidents revealed that most of the wind turbines in the current wind power development process do not have low-voltage ride-through capability, and there are many problems in the construction quality of wind farms, and large-scale wind farm access brings electricity. The overall security of the network and the weak operation and management of wind farms are four major issues.

Among the four major problems mentioned above, the low-voltage traversing capability is a technical threshold that guarantees no net-off. In fact, as early as 2009, the State Grid has issued the "Technical Regulations for the Integration of Wind Farms into Power Grids" in 2009, and proposed that wind turbines should have low voltage ride-through capability. Although the bidding for wind power equipment at the Jiuquan base was basically completed at the end of 2008, actual supply was later than this time. Most of the wind farms were put into operation in 2010 or 2011.

"We did require low-voltage traversing capability in our procurement contract, but it is clear that suppliers have not done enough homework to reduce costs," a Jiuquan wind farm official told reporters.

The consequence of technical neglect is rework. It is understood that after the off-grid accident occurred, the wind power equipment supplier began to carry out technological transformation of the equipment. Wang Ningyi, director of the Wind Power Technology Center of Gansu Province Electric Power Company, said in an interview that at present, there are already 2,408 wind turbines in the province that have completed low voltage ride through transformation, accounting for 78.4% of the total number of wind turbines in the province.

Jiuquan wind power industry told reporters that starting in May, with the cooperation of the State Grid, China Electric Power Research Institute (39.800, -0.08, -0.20%) began to test the wind farm equipment on site.

However, for the results of the transformation of low-voltage ride-through technology, Wang Ningxi is conservative. He believes that under the condition of cost constraints, the existing low-voltage traversing transformation of wind turbines generally chooses relatively simple technical solutions, and there is a certain gap in the key technologies of low voltage ride through. Therefore, without the actual test of actual operating voltage drop, it is impossible to determine whether the modified low-voltage ride-through technology is truly mature.

Wind power internet access is difficult Under the influence of off-grid accidents, the State Grid has begun to limit the amount of Internet access to Jiuquan's wind farms. Yuan Shilu, director of the Guazhou Energy Bureau, told reporters that the efficiency of wind farms in the Guazhou region is only 50% of the original plan. It is understood that the State Grid adopts an index allocation method to limit the amount of wind farms.

Yumeng wind farm person confirmed to reporters that the wind farm's power generation period reached about 60% of the planning period. Obviously, the severe problem of wind curbs is already testing the return on investment of enterprises.

According to the above sources, in the case of wind farms with an installed capacity of 200,000 kilowatts, the original planned annual power generation period is 2,100 hours, but only if they reach 1600 hours or more, companies can maintain capital, and the current general power generation period is only 1200-1400 hours.

Although wind energy does not cost money, the cost of a one-time investment in wind farms is very high. Cheng Hong told reporters that a one-time investment of up to 1.5 billion to 1.7 billion yuan was invested by a Chinese hydropower consulting firm in Guazhou with a 200 MW installed wind farm. Before the company invests in the calculation, according to the planned power generation period, it takes 15 years to recover the cost. The design life of wind turbines is 20 years. In other words, the company only makes money in the last 5 years.

However, if Jiuquan Wind Power Base maintains a working efficiency of 50%, then the wind farms including Zhongshui’s consultants, Guazhou, may have far more investment recovery periods than the wind turbines.

"Of course, with the progress of inspections, there is a certain degree of recovery in the amount of restricted Internet access," said Yuan Shilu.

The reporter also learned that the seriousness of the wind curtailment in Jiuquan wind farm is not only due to a net-off accident, but also because the speed of construction of the power grid in the region does not match the construction speed of the wind farm.

At present, Jiuquan wind power is mainly exported by several lines. The main transportation route is the 750-volt ultra-high voltage line linking Xinjiang and Lanzhou. Jiuquan wind farm staff told reporters that the current absorption of wind power by the 750-volt EHV line is only 300. More than 10,000 kW, apparently, this is far less than the installed capacity of Jiuquan Wind Power Base, but the source said that due to the gap between the installed capacity of the wind farm and the actual power supply of about 40%, the current 750-volt EHV line can still be satisfied. Power requirements for wind farms in Jiuquan.

In order to further absorb wind power, a 800 V DC UHV line is being planned. However, the construction of the Jiuquan wind power base was one step faster than the grid. After completing the "Eleventh Five-Year" goal of 5.5 million kilowatts of wind power installed capacity, Jiuquan Wind Power Base's "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" target is 8 million kilowatts, of which Guazhou County has 5.8 million kilowatts.

In mid-2011, the National Energy Administration approved the 3 million kilowatts plan for the second phase of the Jiuquan wind power industry, of which Guazhou County had a total of 2.4 million kilowatts. Yuan Shilu told reporters that the county has begun infrastructure construction for the second phase of the project. The 2.4 million-kilowatt wind power project has also been locked by several major power generation companies.