On March 22, the kick-off meeting of the State Key R&D Program “Key Technologies for System Regulation Capacity Improved City-Level Multi-Energy Coordinated Regulation of Electricity, Gas, Heat and Stored Energy” (2022YFB2404000), under the charge of Professor Sun Hongbin from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics (EEA), Tsinghua University, was successfully held in Changchun, Jilin Province. The project was initialized by State Grid Jilin Electric Power Company Limited, and the undertaken by a multidisciplinary research team from 10 domestically superior units in the industry, university, research and application fields including Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Nari Technology Company Limited, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Southeast University, Northeast Electric Power University, China Electric Power Research Institute Company Limited, Huaneng Jilin Power Generation Company Limited and State Grid Liaoning Electric Power Company Limited.

Kick-off conference of the project

The conference was presided over by Chen Shoujun, General Manager of State Grid Jilin Electric Power Company Limited, and Wang Zhiwei, Chairman of State Grid Jilin Electric Power Company Limited, delivered a welcome speech. More than 90 people, including Professor Mu Gang, Professor Dong Xuzhu, Senior Engineer Yi Yang, Professor Wei Wei, Professor Jia Hongjie, Professor Wei Zhinong, Researcher Pei Wei, Senior Engineer Xiu Jian, Senior Engineer Liu Jingyan, Senior Engineer Su Yinsheng, Senior Accountant Wu Bingzhi and some other experts composed the responsible experts’ team for the kick-off meeting Group. Liu Jia, Deputy Director of the Industrial Development Promotion Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Zhang Zhaohua, Commissioner of the Third Office for Special Projects, Gao Zhanbo, Deputy Director of the Social Development Science and Technology Division of Jilin Provincial Science and Technology Department, Liu Tieduo, Executive Deputy Mayor of Songyuan Municipal Government, and Huang Han, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Department of the State Grid Corporation of China, as well as heads and relevant officers from the Science and Technology Department of the State Grid, Songyuan Municipal Government and project undertaking units, attended the meeting.

Group photo of project team member representatives and with experts and leaders

At the conference, Wang Zhiwei said on behalf of the project initializing unit that State Grid Jilin Electric Power Company Limited will, under the guidance and leadership of Professor Sun Hongbin, fulfill the main responsibility of the project initializing unit, cooperate with other participating units, solidly promote the project research, and complete the established goals with high standards. Liu Jia, on behalf of the Industrial Development Promotion Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, emphasized that the project has a very important and special position in the key special project of “Energy storage and smart grid technologies” deployed in the “14th Five-Year Plan”, and it will be the first time to use the “city” as the scale to improve the flexible adjustment of the system against the severe challenges of large scale and multiple indicators, it has transformative significance for ensuring the energy supply and safe and stable operation of the new type power systems. Liu Tieduo, on behalf of Songyuan Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government where the demonstration project will be implemented, said that a special energy class will be set up to support the implementation of the project. Huang Han, on behalf of the Science and Technology Department of the State Grid Corporation of China, said that the State Grid Jilin Electric Power Company Limited could provide advanced experience in major projects that can be used for reference and replicated by the units undertaking national key R&D projects in the State Grid system.

Professor Sun Hongbin, the project leader, made a detailed report on the physical model of the urban power grid at the power delivering end, the overall project goal of “improving the system flexibility and resilience through the synergy of city-level multi-energy system of electricity, gas, heat and stored energy”, the general technical path for the application of “two mechanisms (safety mechanism, flexibility description mechanism), two main lines (safety protection, consumption promotion), and one demonstration”, scientific issues, main difficulties, research content, technical path, task division, interface relationship, schedule, milestone plan, organizational management and coordination mechanism, etc of the project actualization plan. Professor Fang Jiakun from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, the person in charge of Subject 1, Professor Li Zuyi from Zhejiang University, the person in charge of Subject 2, Professor Guo Qinglai from Tsinghua University, the person in charge of Subject 3, Li Wei from Nari Stability Technology Company, the person in charge of Subject 4, and Sun Yong from the Development Planning Department of Jilin Electric Power Company Limited, made detailed reports on the subjects and the implementation plan of the demonstration project respectively.

Speech by the project leader and subject leaders

The participating experts highly praised the composition of the project team and the selection of demonstration sites, and fully affirmed the universality and low-cost achievability of the overall project goal, the overall technical route for the construction of a typical new type energy transmission type urban power grid, and the high-tech value and transformative significance of the new type power system. Moreover, they put forward constructive opinions on the project and subject implementation plans, pointing out that the milestone plan and system boundary conditions should be further clarified to make the project results highly scalable, and hoped to strengthen the standard work, raise the indicators to the group standard and industry standard, establish a city-level multi-energy system standard calculation example library, explore a city-level multi-subject coordination mechanism, and provide guidelines for the industry. Liu Jia, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, made a concluding speech, pointing out that project management should be further strengthened in combination with the reality in Songyuan, and he hoped that the demonstration project plan and index assessment plan could be verified as soon as possible.

At the end of the conference, Professor Sun Hongbin, the project leader, said that through the kick-off conference, he felt the strong support and concern of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, experts and leaders for the project, in the future, the team will do well in breakthrough research and implementation, and bring transformative achievements.

Project outline:

Under the “Dual-carbon” goal and “Dual control” energy strategy, the urban power grid at the power delivering end lacks regulation capacity, and there is a great pressure on new energy consumption and transmission. It is urgently necessary to jump out of the power system border, dig out the great flexibility in the urban multi-energy system, and improve the power system regulation capacity and new energy utilization rate, so as to ensure the energy supply and safe and stable operation of the new power system. Existing researches on power system security and regulation focus on the safety and stability of power systems, and researches on multi-energy systems are mainly for small and medium-sized systems such as those in parks and towns, while there are few researches on city-level multi-energy systems of electricity, gas, heat and stored energy, protecting energy supply security and improving regulation capacity, so we need to make breakthrough researches on key and common problems. The project aims the overall goal of “improving system flexibility and resilience through the synergy of city-level multi-energy system of electricity, gas, heat and stored energy” to reveal the safety mechanism of city-level integration of electricity, gas, heat and stored energy, improve the general urban energy supply security, explore the potential of multi-subject collaborative optimization, improve the flexible adjustment capacity of the system, and finally carry out city-level demonstration of collaborative regulation of electricity, gas, heat and stored energy, protect energy supply security and improve the power system regulation capacity and new energy utilization rate.