With the supercharging station on the "tuyere", Guangdong, Hainan and other places are promoting the development of the supercharging industry. At present, car companies, battery companies, charging pile companies and other enterprises in the supercharging industry chain have taken action. As a key factor affecting the large-scale construction of supercharging, how can the power grid prepare?
On April 3, the "Chongqing New Energy Vehicle Convenient Overcharging Action Plan (2024-2025)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Action Plan") was released. The Action Plan clearly states that all new public fast charging stations in the central urban area of Chongqing should have overcharging capacity, and the existing charging stations should be gradually transformed into supercharging stations to form a "1-kilometer supercharging circle". By the end of 2025, Chongqing will build more than 2,000 supercharging stations and more than 4,000 supercharging piles.
The "Action Plan" can be described as a microcosm of the vigorous promotion of supercharging construction in various places. With the supercharging station on the "tuyere", Guangdong, Hainan and other places are promoting the development of the supercharging industry. At present, car companies, battery companies, charging pile companies and other enterprises in the supercharging industry chain have taken action. As a key factor affecting the large-scale construction of supercharging, how can the power grid prepare?
Supercharging station on the "tuyere"
Local governments have already "sounded" the clarion call for supercharging construction. In October last year, Shenzhen issued the "Shenzhen Special Plan for New Energy Vehicle Supercharging Facilities (2023-2025)", proposing to build a world-class "supercharging city" by 2025, and clearly putting forward the goal of Shenzhen's supercharging infrastructure construction. In addition, Guangzhou proposed to build a "supercharging capital", and Hainan Province proposed to build a "supercharging island".
At present, vehicle companies and battery suppliers have increased investment in the field of supercharging to promote the continuous upgrading of the industrial chain. Statistics show that in January 2024, the penetration rate of 800V models will reach 5.8%, and brands such as BYD, Xpeng, Denza, Zeekr, and Formula Leopard have successively launched models equipped with 800V high-voltage platforms. Among the models led or cooperated with Huawei, AVATR 11 and 12, BAIC Alpha S· Models such as the HI version, Zhijie S7, and Wenjie M9 all support 800V high-voltage fast charging.
Li Yangxing, vice president of R&D of Sunwoda Power Technology Co., Ltd., previously publicly stated that the real competition in the industrialization of automotive electric vehicles is overcharging. Supercharging is also the development trend of the future. This year is the first year of the implementation of the supercharging standard, and in the future, high-power charging piles will become the main construction body of public charging piles.
On April 1, Shenzhen's first local standards for the grading evaluation of supercharging equipment and the design of supercharging stations have been officially implemented, and it is clear that the rated power of supercharging equipment is not less than 480kW for a single gun. However, the single power of supercharging equipment on the market is still improving, and Huawei's latest "one kilometer per second" fully liquid-cooled supercharging single gun has reached 600kW. It is reported that the Xiaomi super charging station under construction will also use a 600kW liquid-cooled supercharging scheme, and the first batch is planned to be gradually built in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.
It has a big impact on the power grid
Li Yangxing said, "The requirements for high power and high current for overcharging will bring inrush current and harmonic problems to the power grid and affect the stability of the power grid. If it continues to be overcharged, it will account for 5.3% of the fluctuation of the entire power grid. The higher the popularity of electric vehicles in the future, the greater the impact. ”
Huang Hui, director of the Energy Transition Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, also said in an interview with China Energy News, "The increase in the power and quantity of supercharging units is equivalent to the addition of large-scale, high-power electrical equipment on the user side." If it is charged at the same time, it will have a great impact on the overall power grid and distribution network. ”
Huang Hui took the Action Plan as an example to make a detailed data comparison. Referring to the standard of 480kW rated power of a single supercharging pile with a single gun, the overcharging scale of Chongqing in 2025 will exceed 1.9 million kilowatts. The maximum load in Chongqing in 2023 will be about 26 million kilowatts, which means that the upper limit of the maximum overcharge load will account for 5%-7% of Chongqing's maximum electricity load. However, the "14th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development in Chongqing" mentions that by 2025, the demand-side response capacity will reach more than 3% of the maximum electricity load.
"It can be seen that the load volume brought by the overcharging station is quite large. Failure to achieve orderly management will lead to a shortage of power supply and even affect the safe operation of the power grid. Huang Hui said.
In addition, because most of the distribution networks built in the past did not consider the access of such instantaneous high-power charging equipment, the distribution network needs to be upgraded and expanded urgently. However, capacity expansion only meets the use during peak hours, and idle capacity during peak hours will lead to a decrease in the operation efficiency and economy of distribution network equipment.
Huang Hui also mentioned that the overcharging mode is mainly to increase the power through high current or high voltage, so it will bring problems such as voltage overrun, transformer loss, and line loss.
There have been active explorations
The rapid development of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure has attracted great attention from the state. In the "Guiding Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Further Building a High-quality Charging Infrastructure System" and "Implementation Opinions on Strengthening the Integration of New Energy Vehicles and Power Grids" and other documents, many contents involve power grids.
How does the power grid cope with the impact of high-power charging? Huang Hui gave four suggestions.
First, the charging facilities will be included in the local power grid planning as an important incremental load, strengthen the system demonstration of the adequacy of power supply in the overall and local distribution networks, improve the verification methods and safety standards for the access capacity of high-power overcharging stations, and guide investment enterprises to build supercharging stations in places with relatively good distribution network conditions. If the upgrading and transformation of the distribution network is involved, it should be planned and implemented simultaneously with the construction of the supercharging station as much as possible.
Second, the charging station load should be managed as an important demand-side resource, monitored, and incorporated into the virtual power plant or demand response platform to realize the efficient interaction between the charging station and the power grid, and improve the response and regulation ability of the overcharging station.
Third, grid joint charging station investors select qualified projects to carry out two-way charging and discharging pilots of supercharging stations, and promote electric vehicles to provide reverse flexibility adjustment in the form of mobile energy storage.
Fourth, to promote the intelligent and active distribution network, in addition to transformer expansion and upgrading, joint charging station investors, through the integration of optical storage and charging, increase distribution network alternative energy storage or user-side energy storage, etc., to improve the flexibility of the distribution network and reduce the peak regulation pressure of the large power grid.
The reporter noted that the "Action Plan" has clearly pointed out that the overall promotion of digitalization, intelligence and greening, the construction of the power grid will be strengthened, and the carrying capacity of the regional distribution network where the supercharging station is located will be reasonable and abundant, and the perception will be accurate and sensitive, which will strongly support large-scale and high-power charging load access.
In addition, according to public reports, in order to implement the "Implementation Opinions on Strengthening the Integration and Interaction of New Energy Vehicles and Power Grids" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments, Shenzhen will also focus on charging piles to wake up vehicles, charge and discharge power regulation, charging and swapping data access, charging and swapping stations and power grid interaction ability assessment, etc., and take the lead in formulating and revising a number of local standards for vehicle-network interaction.
Text丨Reporter Zhao Qiong