Page 147 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

124 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

from the affluent government stimulus package. Rapid development of Chi-
nese smart grid systems has shown and will continue to reap significant social
and economic benefits.
Even though this chapter is not intended for a full-set/thorough projection/
exploration, we will investigate the merits and attributes of the third-
generation grid in China and the great smart grid market success within this
section. In general, there is a steady-and-astonishing growth and immense
opportunities in China for its smart grid products. The Chinese-style power
grid is for achieving integration of power, information, and business flow, and
to form a strong and secure grid.
To understand the excitement in Chinese smart grid development, let us
review interesting cases in major cities till the end of the year 2011. For
example, China has installed smart meters (of over 58 million), planned with
smart charging stations and network to serve electric vehicles (with thousands
of charging piles completed), and built the world’s largest wind, solar energy,
and storage systems.
As a case in point on the smart grid, Zhangbei power station (Greenbang)
has employed the world’s largest hybrid green power station built till the year
2011. It is a demonstration project and has been put into operation on
December 25, 2011, in Zhangbei, Hebei province of China. Its grid project
includes clean energy sources and energy storage for demonstration.
This demonstration project is constructed by BYD and the State Grid
Corporation of China, which is China’s largest utilities company. This project
is a part of Chinese ambitious smart grid plan. It combines 140 MW of
renewable energy generation, efficient energy storage, and a smart power
transmission. With an initial investment of $500 million, the project combines
140 MW of renewable energy generation (both wind and solar), 36 MWh of
battery power storage, and smart power transmission technologies.
The Zhangbei project is reported to be a great success. Due to its
complementation of wind and PV power, the utilization rate of wind turbines
has been enhanced by 5%e10%, and its whole renewable energy efficiency
has been improved by 5%e10% by using of battery storage system. During its
first 100 days safe and stable operation, the power station has already gener-
ated over 100 GWh electricity. There may be overflow or excess of energy
generation, and the excess energy can be used to feed back to the utility grid
once the storage is filled. The Zhangbei project is an excellent story of success,
and this project provides a great perspective for renewable energy solution for
China and elsewhere.
The other case is about experimental setup of a microgrid (Jin et al., 2012).
A smart microgrid PV experimental system of 50 kW has been designed in
early this year and is to be set up by China Huaneng Group company in the
Future Science and Technology City, Beijing. The company takes up on the
microgrid project as a natural innovation for constructing a scalable smart grid
in the near future. This project is the first smart microgrid power system and