New Energy: Driving the Green Transformation of Power Systems

New energy, primarily wind and solar power, is reshaping the landscape of global power systems. Compared with traditional fossil fuels, new energy features renewable resources, zero-carbon operation, and wide distribution. Over the past decade, the unit capacity of wind turbines has increased from 2 MW to over 15 MW, while photovoltaic module conversion efficiency has risen from about 15% to more than 23%. In terms of cost, the levelized cost of electricity from onshore wind and large-scale solar farms has fallen below that of new coal-fired power projects.

However, large-scale integration of new energy also presents challenges for power grids. The output of wind and solar power is intermittent and variable due to weather conditions, making it difficult to precisely match load demand on different time scales. To address this, energy storage systems such as lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries, and pumped hydro storage have become key technologies for smoothing output, providing frequency regulation and reserve capacity. Meanwhile, new energy forecasting techniques combining numerical weather prediction and machine learning algorithms can provide output curves 24 to 72 hours in advance, helping dispatch centers optimize unit commitment.

Driven by policies and market mechanisms, distributed photovoltaics and dispersed wind power are being promoted in industrial parks and rural areas, following a “self-generation with surplus feeding into the grid” model. Offshore wind power, with its higher annual utilization hours, has become a new growth pole. Wind-solar hybrid and wind-solar-hydro integration bases improve overall transmission efficiency through temporal and spatial complementarity of multiple resources. It is anticipated that as flexible HVDC transmission and green hydrogen technologies mature, the share of new energy in the overall energy mix will continue to rise steadily.