Four Thoughts on Distributed Energy Sources

Thinking one: “The old tune revisited” What can be done by the gas power generation industry before the long price mechanism is reformed?

Cost is the direction that natural gas power generation companies are striving to develop. Solving the problem of inversion between cost and profit is the most important issue that needs to be solved.

The biennial price reform of natural gas has caused natural gas power generation companies to agonize. Upstream natural gas prices have risen, and natural gas power generation prices have not risen correspondingly. As a result, the profitability of natural gas power generation has continued to shrink after each gas price adjustment. At the meeting, China Resources GCL, the natural gas distributed supplier that was used as a model of success, said that it was difficult to rely solely on natural gas for power generation.

Natural gas, as a peak-regulating power, faces a huge gap between different energy prices in China. Most of the natural gas power plants have extremely small utilization hours. Not only are the energy-saving effects unachievable, but the operation of natural gas power plants is also on thin ice. This allows many developers of natural gas power generation projects to "go to the local development and reform commissions to work, run electricity prices," rely on the government agreed on the existence of non-profit electricity prices or subsidies.

Therefore, at almost every seminar on natural gas power generation, the final conclusion will be pushed to the price mechanism. Natural gas companies call for “gas-electricity price linkages” and require higher on-grid tariffs to view power grids and oil and gas companies as a bottleneck in the development of natural gas power generation – but how will the rise in electricity prices affect the cost rise of downstream manufacturing companies? The issue of natural gas prices is how to find the most suitable market space and institutional space for such expensive fossil fuels. It is only that the price of electricity has risen. It is only a matter of moving down the cost issue to the value chain.

In any case, price subsidy or non-institutional profit manoeuvre is not a long-term cure. All these require a fundamental price system change. In addition to waiting for a long and unknown future, waiting for the government and the system to make major narrative-like adjustments first, can companies change their business initiative?

In this sense, the commercial idea of ​​distributed energy may bring commercial space - looking for profit from multiple sources of steam, hot water, and refrigeration. (Guangzhou University City's project also initially spent a lot of effort, obtained a separate special approved ice storage electricity price, this process is the experience of other projects can be summed up learning.)

60% of the natural gas downstream market is used for natural gas power generation, fuel, and construction. That is to say, the natural gas market needs to be cultivated to consider the natural gas profitability in these sectors - these areas can be used to use the cold hot spots triple supply to improve energy efficiency. At the same time, find the direction of profit potential.

Thinking II: [Pre-thinking] Distributed Requirements Development

Externality is an advantage of natural gas power generation and distributed energy because of better cleaning and energy efficiency. Although the externality advantage can be strongly pushed by the government-led forces, it can also promote projects with environmental externalities through the rational allocation of resource taxes. But whether it can make externalities bring more business opportunities? In this regard, it may be necessary to jump out of an energy project to think about it and put distributed energy systems in the new trend of urbanization for early deployment.

It is very important to find partners that can benefit from this externality. At present, the partners for distributed energy projects include industrial parks for local governments or developers of commercial buildings with sustainable concepts. However, the experience of the project manager of China Resources GCL indicates that the mode of cooperation with the former may be better than the latter because commercial buildings cannot objectively accommodate large-scale projects or the scale of their energy use cannot be realized. The industrial development zone's distributed energy system is bundled with high-energy-consuming industrial enterprises. By increasing energy efficiency through polygeneration, it can help local governments increase the strength of attracting investment - it is this externality that reflects commercial significance.

Regardless of whether it is a distributed energy system in an industrial park or a new urban area (such as the University City project in Guangzhou), it will be critical to study changes in user demand in advance. For example, in an industrial park, the entry of a company may take several years, which means that the demand for power generation, water, or refrigeration will have a growth curve - this will determine the cycle of project recovery, if a large amount of investment in the initial construction of the industrial park May not be wise. Time and demand are a group of relationships and the unit and capacity of polygeneration projects need to be allocated in a more rational construction cycle.

Space and demand are another set of relationships. Since polygeneration involves more negative needs, scientific balance and deployment of electricity, cooling and heating, steam and domestic water demand will be very important. Therefore, in the initial stage of construction, it is necessary to thoroughly study the various aspects of population planning, building area, industrial categories, and electric power peak allocation. This makes distributed energy not only an energy project, but also a design that needs to consider the overall economic factors.

Think three: [Original Qingyuan] Distributed is an energy supply system, not an energy system

The difference between the words, the energy project idea is a world difference. Understanding distributed simplicity as a regional power generation project may be far from the true meaning of distributed energy. Hua Sheng believes that distributed energy should be regarded as a kind of energy supply system instead of an energy system. The energy supply system does not emphasize what kind of primary energy is used, nor does it emphasize the size, but emphasizes the energy supply process. Energy use optimization.

The WADE's definition of Distributed Energy System is "located in the load center to provide users with local, efficient, and efficient energy systems that use cold, hot and tidy electricity," without limiting the use of primary energy and limiting the scale.

The three aspects of on-site, high-efficiency, cold-hot steam and steam supply should be regarded as their key words. From a macro point of view, the ultimate goal of distribution should be to increase energy efficiency rather than simply using a primary energy source, because regardless of the energy model used, the separation of power generation, cooling, and heating will have energy losses. The cogeneration energy supply is a way to reduce losses.

In the future, smartgrid's technology will promote more decentralized energy demand and supply. The combination of these two directions is the general trend. But distributed energy should not be seen as a power plant for investment and distribution. It should be a concept of balancing with smart grids, emphasizing "in situ" advantages, and reducing losses in the transmission of electricity and energy.

Think four: [Future Trends] Both hot and cold should be the focus of distributed energy needs to be emphasized

Distribution does not limit primary energy attributes, which is evident in the current trend of research on small nuclear reactors.

Beginning this year, the U.S. Department of Energy is currently supporting research on the SMR, a small nuclear reactor that is 5% of the size of existing nuclear power plants. However, SMR will be both hot and cold, and the main target of its research is to supply power and heat to the region. This possible development trend means that distributed energy sources do not only limit primary energy sources such as natural gas, wind power, and photovoltaics, which are generally discussed, but also maintain the core of dual energy supply, both hot and cold, to improve energy efficiency.

In China, Huaneng's 200MW high-temperature gas-cooled reactor project in Shandong, and CNNC's Saitama project to fight for roads, will all be SMR's new attempts. These projects will break the inherent impression of distributed projects in the future.