Recently, the reporter learned from the National Energy Administration that the scale of renewable energy installed capacity in China has achieved new breakthroughs this year.
In the first half of the year, the newly added installed capacity of renewable energy in the country reached 109 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 98.3%, accounting for 77% of the total newly added capacity. As of the first half of this year, the total installed capacity of renewable energy in China has surpassed 1.3 billion kilowatts, reaching 1.322 billion kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 18.2%. This historic milestone has exceeded coal-fired power capacity, accounting for approximately 48.8% of China's total installed capacity. Specifically, the installed capacity of hydropower is 418 million kilowatts, wind power is 389 million kilowatts, solar power is 470 million kilowatts, and biomass power is 43 million kilowatts.
Categorized by type, in the first half of the year, the national newly added hydropower grid capacity reached 5.36 million kilowatts, including 2.06 million kilowatts from conventional hydropower and 3.3 million kilowatts from pumped storage power. The newly added grid capacity of wind power in the country was 22.99 million kilowatts, including 21.89 million kilowatts from onshore wind power and 0.11 million kilowatts from offshore wind power. In terms of distribution of newly added installations, the "Three North" regions accounted for 70.6% of the total new installations in the country. The national newly added grid capacity of photovoltaic power was 78.42 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 154%, of which 37.46 million kilowatts were from centralized photovoltaic power generation, a year-on-year increase of 234%, and 40.96 million kilowatts were from distributed photovoltaic power generation, a year-on-year increase of 108%. At the same time, wind and photovoltaic power generation also experienced rapid growth. In the first half of the year, the national renewable energy power generation reached 1.34 trillion kilowatt-hours, of which wind and photovoltaic power generation accounted for 729.1 billion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year increase of 23.5%.
With the rapid growth of renewable energy installed capacity, the demand for various types of regulating resources in the power system has increased rapidly. Liu Yafang, Deputy Director of the Energy Conservation and Technology Equipment Department of the National Energy Administration, stated that this year, new energy storage projects have accelerated their implementation, and the installed capacity has continued to increase rapidly. As of the end of June, the national newly completed and operational new energy storage projects have accumulated an installed capacity of over 17.33 million kilowatts/35.8 million kilowatt-hours, with an average energy storage duration of 2.1 hours. From January to June, the newly invested and operational installed capacity was approximately 8.63 million kilowatts/17.72 million kilowatt-hours, equivalent to the cumulative installed capacity in previous years. In terms of investment scale, based on current market prices, the new investment in new energy storage has driven direct investment of over 30 billion yuan.
"Lithium-ion battery storage still dominates the market, while relatively mature storage technologies such as compressed air energy storage, flow battery storage, and flywheel storage continue to develop rapidly. New technologies such as supercapacitor storage, solid-state battery storage, and lithium titanate battery storage have also begun to be applied in engineering demonstrations. Various new types of energy storage technologies are developing rapidly in a diversified manner," Liu Yafang said. Currently, the National Energy Administration is organizing comprehensive supervision in the electricity sector. The operation and dispatch of new energy storage projects, market transactions, and other situations have been included in key supervision areas to better utilize new energy storage and other regulating resources, promote the large-scale development and integration of wind and solar energy and other renewable energy, and ensure the security and stability of power supply.