Measures introduced to support development of virtual power plants

Shenzhen has rolled out measures to further unleash the city’s potential in distributed resources, build a new type of power system with efficient interaction between sources, grids, loads, and energy storage, and better promote the accelerated development of virtual power plants.

The recently introduced measures focus on four areas: strengthening the effective supply of key equipment and products, enhancing the level of interaction between charging and battery swapping infrastructure and the vehicle network, promoting the intelligent transformation of buildings and industrial parks, and accelerating the effective aggregation and precise response of distributed resources.

According to the measures, Shenzhen will support the development of key technologies for virtual power plants. Focusing on key research and development areas such as intelligent control terminals based on advanced sensing, measurement, and positioning, load power forecasting using general large models and real-time sensing and coordinated control systems for large-scale distributed resources for aggregators, support will be provided for the establishment of several  key laboratories, corporate technology centers, and engineering research centers. After evaluation, individual projects may receive support of up to 10 million yuan (US$1.38 million).

The city will encourage mass production of key equipment for virtual power plants. New energy vehicle manufacturers are encouraged to pursue technological innovation and enable vehicle-to-grid (V2G) functionality. For industrialization projects involving key equipment for virtual power plants, such as V2G charging stations, intelligent control terminals for distributed resources, collaborative operation management software for distributed resources, metering communication chip modules, and computing chips, support of up to 15 million yuan per project will be provided following evaluation.

According to the measures, new charging infrastructure should include orderly charging capabilities and should be in accordance with relevant local standards. The upgrading and renovation of public DC fast-charging stations should be accelerated to improve the power regulation capabilities of fast-charging piles. Following evaluation, up to 5 million yuan in support will be provided per enterprise for the intelligent renovation of existing public DC fast-charging stations.

The newly constructed battery swapping infrastructure should possess orderly charging capabilities and comply with relevant local standards. Battery swapping stations are encouraged to undergo power topology transformation, upgrade their original unidirectional rectifier circuits to bidirectional power conversion system (PCS) modules, while concurrently upgrading the station-side energy management system (EMS) power control systems.

For typical vehicle types such as buses, logistics vehicles, sanitation vehicles, and port trailers, targeting integrated parking and charging scenarios in industrial parks and public parking lots, demonstration applications and continuous upgrades of vehicle-grid interaction should be strengthened, thereby promoting city-wide integration of ultra-fast charging, fast charging, and AC charging facilities with vehicle-grid interaction capabilities. After evaluation, up to 5 million yuan in support per enterprise will be provided for charging facilities equipped with V2G functionality.

In addition, Shenzhen will promote the intelligent transformation of buildings and industrial parks, which includes improving the level of distributed photovoltaic applications, enhancing the response capabilities of buildings, innovating smart electricity usage methods in industrial and commercial parks, and accelerating the intelligent transformation of new types of energy storage.

To accelerate the effective aggregation and precise response of distributed resources, the city will support the installation of intelligent control terminals, encourage the construction of virtual power plant resource aggregation platforms, and organize and implement precise responses from virtual power plants.