IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2018 - 37

New Energy Management
Systems in China

The power grid in China has been developing rapidly with the improvement of the national economy
and standard of living. by the end of 2016, China's installed
power generation capacity had reached 1,646 gw. Currently,
China's power grid has the largest installed capacity, the
highest voltage level [1,000 -kv ultra-high voltage (Uhv)],
and the largest annual power generation in the world. The
operation of such a large-scale power grid poses many major
challenges for electric power control centers.
1) How to protect the security and stability of the verylarge-scale power grid operation. There are several
features of this kind of grid, including wide geographical distribution, complex dynamic time-varying
structural parameters, intensive and multi-infeed dc
points, concentrations of large-capacity transmission
corridors, large-scale grid connections of intermittent
renewable power resources, strong couplings between
the sending and receiving sides, and strong interactions
between the ac and dc systems. There is an urgent need
to improve the observability and controllability of the
whole power system and implement the coordinated
control of the multilevel grids.
2) How to ensure the effective accommodation of largescale renewable energy resources. by the end of
2016, the installed capacity of wind power and photovoltaic capacity reached 148 gw and 77 gw,
respectively. The sum of these renewable resources
accounted for 13.7% of China's total installed capacity. The penetration of wind power and photovoltaic
power has reached 30% in some northern provinces
dominated by coal-fired generation. The randomness
and intermittency of large-scale renewable power
production and the reduction of the system spinning
inertia greatly affect the security and stability of
power grid operation.
3) How to cope with the impact of major natural disasters on power grid operation. The grid operation will

be affected by natural disasters, such as earthquakes,
typhoons, lightning, bush fires, and frosting fogs. The
ice storm in early 2008 affected the power systems of
14 provinces in China. The wenchuan earthquakes in
sichuan province on 12 May 2008 caused major damage to electric facilities. immediately after these disasters, the independent multilevel automation systems in
China had trouble performing normal control functions.
The lack of coordination between the supervisory control and data acquisition (sCada) system and energy
management systems (eMss) among multiple control
centers was of serious concern.
4) How to deal with cyberattacks and terrorist attacks.
The modern power grid control system is highly dependent on computer and communication technology.
Cybersecurity threats to the electric power network
have become increasingly serious in recent years. The
ertan hydro power station in sichuan province received abnormal orders that led to an outage event on
13 october 2000. power grid control urgently requires
the establishment of cybersecurity defense systems.
The international very-large-power grid operators (go15)
was formed in 2004 to focus on the challenges faced by
power grid operators from all over the world. go15 cooperated with Cigre to prepare the white paper "eMs architectures of the 21st Century," which was officially released by
Cigre in 2011. The white paper put forward six requirements
for the new generation of eMss: 1) adopting a service-oriented
architecture (soa), 2) using the Common information Model
(CiM), 3) implementing cybersecurity protection measures,
4) using an independent supporting platform, 5) building
a redundant backup control center, and 6) employing unified graphic human-machine interfaces. This white paper
has become a technical guide for developing a new generation of eMss throughout the power industry. according
to the go15's investigation of 18 members, which were
the world's largest power grid operators in early 2016, the

By Yaozhong Xin, Boming Zhang, Mingyu Zhai,
Qiang Li, and Huafeng Zhou
march/april 2018

ieee power & energy magazine

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