Installed capacity of renewable energy rises steadily in China

Photo taken on May 15, 2021 shows a bird's-eye view of massive photovoltaic panels on the mountains of Si'aowan village, Zhangxiang township. Xianju county, Taizhou, east China's Zhejiang province. (People's Daily Online/Yao Feng)

Photo taken on May 23, 2021 shows a wind farm in Yuhuan, east China's Zhejiang province. The wind farm has 25 wind turbines and an installed capacity of 49.5 megawatts. It is able to generate 120 million kWh of electricity on a yearly basis. (People's Daily/ Duan Junli)

Baihetan dam, located in the junction area of southwest China's Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, is under construction, April 27, 2021. (People's Daily Online/Liang Zhiqiang)

In 2020, annual renewable energy capacity additions of the world increased 45 percent from a year ago, the highest year-on year increase since 1999, said Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) in a report it issued on May 11.

According to the report, China alone was responsible for over 80 percent of the increase in annual installations from 2019 to 2020, as massive onshore wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) projects of the country had to be connected to the grid by the end of 2020.

Statistics released by China's National Energy Administration indicated that the country's total installed capacity of renewable energy amounted to 948 million kilowatts as of the end of March this year. In particular, wind and solar farms saw capacity reach 287 million kilowatts and 259 million kilowatts, respectively, and the installed capacity of hydropower amounted to 371 million kilowatts. Besides, the country generated 475.47 billion kWh of electricity from renewable energy sources in the first quarter of this year.

On March 22, the total PV power generation in east China's Zhejiang province exceeded 10 million kilowatts for the first time, which meant that over 1/7 of the province's power supply came from solar energy. Striving to build itself into a national clean energy demonstration province, Zhejiang is targeting the goals of peaking carbon dioxide emission and achieve carbon neutrality. By building a high-elastic power grid in the age of energy internet and a new type of power system with new energy as the main body, Zhejiang is providing green and clean impetus for regional development.

The province has launched an system that transforms energy consumption of enterprises, including electricity, natural gas, coal, and petroleum, into carbon emission volumes levels, which serves as a basis of energy efficiency evaluation for enterprises. So far, the system has been employed by over 3,700 enterprises above designated size in Zhejiang's Huzhou Municipality. Companies can scan the code to know their carbon emissions per unit of output value.

In Butuo county, Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan province, a huge converter station that covers an area of around 87 standard soccer pitches is under construction. As a core part of a ±800 kV ultra high voltage (UHV) DC transmission project spanning from Baihetan in the junction area of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces to east China's Jiangsu province, the converter station is the largest of its kind under construction in the world.

It is also the largest one in terms of unit capacity, said Wang Yongping, vice general manager of the State Grid Sichuan Electric Power Company. According to him, the initial phase of the project is expected to be put into operation July this year.

Zhang Jin, a senior engineer from the State Grid’s UHV transmission project department, introduced that the UHV construction of the State Grid in the next five years will focus on clean energy. Seven circuits of UHV DC power transmission lines will be built during the period, which will increase power transmission capacity by 56 million kilowatts.

"By 2025, cross-regional power transmission by the company is expected to be 300 million kilowatts, half of which will be clean energy, helping reducing 1.34 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emission," he said.