The planning of supporting coal-fired power generation for the Shaanxi-Hubei UHV corridor has been approved, and it is expected to deploy 6GW of new energy projects

According to reports, the National Energy Administration recently officially issued the "Reply on the Power Construction Planning of the Northern Shaanxi to Hubei Transmission Channel in the Shaanxi Northern Coal Power Base" (National Energy Power [2020] No. 14), marking that the power supply point plan of the Northern Shaanxi-Hubei ±800Kv UHV transmission project has been approved by the National Energy Administration. On February 28, the State Grid announced that the Northern Shaanxi to Hubei ±800 kV UHV DC project officially started.

The reply letter is an instruction on supporting coal-fired power generation capacity, with a planned construction scale of 7.96 million kilowatts. In addition, the document clearly requires that supporting coal-fired power projects should give full play to their peak-shaving capabilities, provide necessary support for the transmission of new energy such as wind power and photovoltaic power generation, and ensure the new energy consumption capacity.

The document also pointed out that it is necessary to summarize the operating experience of other channels and gradually increase the proportion of new energy in the transmitted electricity. The corresponding construction plans for new energy power generation projects such as wind power and photovoltaics should be studied and arranged separately.

According to a previous report by Yulin Daily, the project is designed to transmit 40 billion kWh of electricity annually, with an installed capacity of more than 14 million kilowatts of supporting power sources, a total investment of 18.5 billion yuan, and is scheduled to be completed and put into operation in 2021. Among them, the thermal power source is 8 million kilowatts and the new energy power source is 6 million kilowatts.

Judging from the reply from the National Energy Administration, the planned installed capacity of coal-fired power is basically matched, which means that the configuration scale of new energy is expected to reach 6GW. From the perspective of photovoltaic development in northern Shaanxi, the region has good light resources and is one of the hot areas for photovoltaic investment in recent years. However, due to the impact of consumption, investment companies have many concerns. The planning of coal-fired power with UHV has been approved, which will be a great benefit for the consumption of local stock photovoltaic and wind power and the investment enthusiasm of new bidding parity projects.

In fact, in general, if UHV projects transmit new energy power, coal-fired power or thermal power will inevitably be required to participate in peak load regulation. Taking the Qinghai UHV base, which attracted much attention in the industry in 2019, as an example, the scale of new energy power transmission is nearly 5GW, but this is based on Qinghai's abundant hydropower resources as the basis for peak load regulation. In other areas with scarce hydropower resources, UHV peak load regulation of new energy projects can only be matched with coal-fired power projects.