Co-evolution entropy as a new index to explore power system transition: A case study of China's electricity domain

Power systems are bound to experience a long transition process, which involves not only changes in technology but also changes in user practices, regulations, industrial networks, infrastructures, and cultures. There are conflicts among these factors on account of the mutual uncoordinated changes, which would hinder the development of power systems. Therefore, keeping permanent coordination of numerous factors is a great challenge for the power system evolution. Current evaluation methods of power system evolution do not pay sufficient attention to the co-evolution of factors, particularly for technology, society, finance and policy, as well as insight from innovation studies and the sociology of technology. Hence, we propose a new index: co-evolution entropy, which can indicate the positive-negative entropy interaction coordinating system evolution. Then, based on socio-technical system, we identify 14 factors participating in the evolution of power system from three layers: landscape, regime and niche. Finally, we apply this index to China's electricity domain for identifying the evolution obstacles of non-coordinates, and propose a strategy to improve the system's co-evolution. Results show that (1) the change in co-evolution entropy from different layers has different characteristics; for example, the landscape mainly possesses negative entropy, but the regime holds positive entropy. (2) The power system's co-evolution entropy changes from 0.043 to −0.154, and reaches the maximum (0.054) in 2000s, which indicates that China's power system begins the coordinated development through a run-in. (3) The co-evolution of the power system is hindered by too much policy intervention; however, technology innovation and electricity market opening could enhance its co-evolution. We also derive strategic policy recommendations from the analysis result and present a co-evolution concept to improve the socio-technical system.