Photo: State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power

Recently, State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power has developed the first municipal virtual power plant monitoring and management platform in Changzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province. The platform has an adjustable capacity of more than 120,000 kilowatts, effectively promoting the participation of micro-grids, energy storage, charging piles, and other resources in the flexible adjustment of the power grid. This contributes to power supply security and the consumption of new energy on-site.

As an emerging technology in the field of supply and demand coordination, the technical standards, market mechanisms, and operational models of virtual power plants are still being explored and refined.

In June of this year, State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power piloted a virtual power plant monitoring and management platform in Changzhou, integrating services such as standardized resource access, adjustment capacity verification, and operation monitoring and evaluation.

Leveraging the new load management system of Jiangsu Province, the platform has established a unified demand-side interface and connected with nine local virtual power plant operators. It aggregates 3,561 users, including photovoltaic, energy storage, charging piles, and 5G base stations, with a total capacity of 454,500 kilowatts. This forms a real-time adjustable resource pool with an adjustable capacity exceeding 120,000 kilowatts.

Photo: State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power

"Through this platform, we can monitor the operational status data of virtual power plants and their adjustable resources minute by minute, uniformly standardize and manage indicators such as maximum adjustable capacity, adjustment rate, response time, and normalize the peak and valley filling calls of virtual power plants. This helps to better verify the adjustment capabilities of virtual power plants," said Wu Wei, Director of the Marketing Department of the State Grid Changzhou Power Supply Company.

At 11 am on July 24, to simulate the sharp growth of distributed photovoltaic power generation, the platform issued valley filling adjustment instructions of 5,370 kilowatts. Six virtual power plant operators mobilized resources such as energy storage, charging piles, controllable air conditioning, and controllable lighting to complete the response within one minute.

Subsequently, the platform automatically generated an evaluation report that included the list of users participating in the adjustment, the average response volume, and the power adjustment compliance rate. This report provides a reference for operators to improve the rational economic allocation of resources.

Global Times