IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2015 - 41

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To sum up the experience of China in the past decade, the two pillars for the
remarkable growth of wind (see Figure 1) and PV power (see Figure 2) are the largescale plant development in the renewable energy (RE) "power-base," as well as the
continuing introduction of strong incentive policies by the central government.
Large-scale power bases of wind and PVs contributed to over 80% of the total gridconnected VG in China, which is one of the distinct differences of VG development
between China and other countries. Currently, 82% of wind capacity is distributed
in the "Three North" (i.e., North China, Northwest China, and Northeast China)
area and is developed in plants of tens or even thousands of megawatts. The
maximum proportion of instantaneous wind output compared to local load
in East Inner Mongolia and Gansu, located in northeast and northwest
China, respectively, reached 111% and 39% in 2013. In 12 provincial
power grids, which include West Inner Mongolia, East Inner Mongolia, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Liaoning,
Heilongjiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Ningxia, and
Xinjiang, wind power has become the second
largest source of generation. Large-scale power
stations account for 80% of PV power, almost all
of which is concentrated in Qinghai, Gansu, and
other western provinces. PV power has become
the second largest source of generation in Qinghai,
accounting for 22% of its total installed generation.
However, this development mode and pace have also
induced a prominent problem: the curtailment of wind and
PV power from the large wind and PV power bases. Wind curtailment began in 2010, and the most serious wind curtailment so far
was in 2012, when the national average wind curtailment rate was 17.1%.
The wind curtailment situation improved in 2013 and 2014. According to data
released by the Chinese National Energy Administration, the national average wind
curtailment rate was reduced to 11% and 8% in 2013 and 2014, respectively. But in
some areas such as Jilin, Gansu, and Inner Mongolia, the wind curtailment rate was
still over 15%. With the concentrated construction of large-scale PV power stations
and insufficient power transmission capacity, there has been PV power curtailment
in Gansu and Qinghai in the past two years.
Introduced in 2005 and revised in 2009, the Renewable Energy Law of the People's
Republic of China, along with other supportive measures, plays an important role in
facilitating renewable energy investment and development. Feed-in tariffs and the full
power purchase policy are the core incentive policies for renewable energy development in China.
Feed-in tariffs were introduced in China in 2009 and started with inland wind
power. In 2014, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC)
adjusted the feed-in tariffs of wind power for the four categories of wind resource
areas enacted in 2009. The feed-in tariff for Class IV resource areas, which are with
the weakest wind conditions, remained the same as its 2009 level (0.61 RMB/kWh),
while the feed-in tariffs for the other three classes were all reduced by 0.2 RMB/kWh,
with the new feed-in tariffs at 0.49 RMB/kWh, 0.52 RMB/kWh
and 0.56 RMB/kWh, respectively. In 2014, tariff policy for offshore wind was introduced. It is specified that the tariff for near
sea offshore wind plants that are put into operation before 2017 is
0.85 RMB/kWh (tax included, and the same below). The tariff for
intertidal zone offshore wind is 0.75 RMB/kWh. At the same time,
market competition approaches such as concession bidding will be
encouraged to determine the developer and feed-in tariff for offshore wind power. For PV power stations, a unified national feed-in
tariff, 1 RMB/kWh, was introduced in 2011. In 2013, the entire

Integrating Variable
Generation in China

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