Temporal-spatial analysis and improvement measures of Chinese power system for wind power curtailment problem

The Chinese wind power industry has experienced a period of rapid development for the past 10 years, but the utilization hours of wind power equipment started to drop abruptly since 2011, and the curtailment problem has become worse year by year. Throughout the year of 2012, Chinese wind power sector lost about 20 million MWh in electricity from wind curtailment. For regions that experienced the most serious curtailment problems in China, the percentage of wind power installation and consumption have been relatively low compared to other countries. Although previous studies have so far proposed many explanations, the main characteristics and most critical factors of the curtailment problems are not very clear. To fill this gap, we have performed a detailed study on the wind power curtailment problem from the perspective of the whole of China by analyzing a large amount of wind power curtailment data and the characteristics of wind power curtailment in China have been addressed from temporal-spatial perspective. According to the characteristics and curtailment data, we propose that the curtailment is rooted in unreasonable power source structure and long chain power grid network structure. Based on the above two reasons, this study has proposed further improvement measures in terms of the power source structure, consumption structure, the grid structure. Relative market and policy suggestions are proposed to provide guidance for the further development of wind power.