(China Economic, Sep 07, 2006) The power industry is known for its high consumption of energy. According to the statistics, in 2005, China's power industry consumed about 1.1 billion tons of coal, which covered over 50% of China's coal output of 2.19 billion tons. From January to June 2006, the power industry had consumed 535.47 million tons of coal, with an increase of 8.27% from the same period last year. And its coal consumption for power generation was 482.4148 million tons, with an increase of 8.12%. Thus it is of vital importance for the power industry to conserve energy and cut its consumption.
   
According to some relevant departments, with acceleration of technology upgrading in power industry and enhanced control over energy conservation, the standard coal consumption rate for the nationwide power supply was 362 g/kWh in the first six months this year, with a drop of 6 g/kWh compared with the same period last year. The power consumption rate of the nationwide power plants was 6.15%, of which the power consumption rate of hydro power plants was 0.47% while it was 6.87% with thermal power plants, and the line loss rate was 6.19%, 0.22 percent lower than the same period last year.

These data show although certain achievements have been made in conserving energy for the power industry, the energy utilization efficiency in China is still worrying and the structural conflict in the power industry is still serious. Compared with the international level, the coal consumption in power supply for the power plants is still 50g/kWh more. The transmitting line loss rate is 2% to 2.5% higher than the international power companies, with 45 billion kWh more power loss each year. This almost equals to the total annual power consumption for a province in the middle region. So more efforts need to be made to conserve energy for the power industry.

   
Many Factors Resulted in High Energy Consumption
   
In the past two years, many big advanced units have been put into production in the power industry, which accelerated the process of eliminating the small units with high energy consumption and low efficiency. Meanwhile, the power plants sped up the technical innovation and technical advancement for cutting the energy consumption, strengthened their control over the energy conservation, and made some achievements, but there still exist many problems and there is still large space for improving energy conservation.
  
According to a survey recently published by China Energy Conservation Association (CECA), the potential of conserving energy of China's terminal electric devices is approximately 200 billion kWh. There is a market of about RMB300 billion yuan for conserving energy in China, and this will be soaring constantly with an average 10% increase of the yearly power consumption.
  
"The power industry is an important department of energy transformation. However, there is still difference between the present transforming efficiency of the power system and the international advanced level. Increasing the energy transforming efficiency contributes a lot to energy conservation." Dai Yande, vice president of Energy Research Institute of National Development and Reform Commission told the reporter.
   
It is known that little difference between the efficiency of the big power generating units in China and those of the same type in other countries. The main reason why the power generating units as a whole has a low efficiency lies in the fact that there exist considerable small thermal power-generating units. "In some places where the small and medium plants do not have enough awareness to conserve energy, they use many medium and low voltage units to cut the cost, which is an important cause for the high energy consumption of the power industry at present. " said Dai Yande, "On the other hand, another cause lies in the low efficiency of using power."
  
Yu Kunshan, General Engineer of the EPRI-NERC (Electric Power Research Institute) agreed with this view, "It is a key step for the power supply plants to cut their energy consumption. Low efficiency of the corporate electric devices and the pollution of the power grid will both result in more efficiency spoilage of the power supply system and influence the result of energy conservation in the power industry. "
  
"Moreover, many small-and-medium-sized plants in China do not have enough technical capacity. For example, their technical equipment are out of date in water pump and fan, high voltage frequency conversion adjustment, which cover a considerable proportion in the energy consumption of the power plants. This leads to much difficulty in conserving energy. But the researchers in research institutes do not have enough marketing awareness, which makes some power-saving technologies hard to be promoted in the market. " Yu Kunshan added.

Various Measures Need to Be Taken to Conserve Power
   
The power industry should find their potential to improve the efficiency and cut energy consumption in the following two aspects. Firstly, they should enhance the internal energy conservation in the industry. Secondly, they should improve the power-consuming efficiency of the users.
 
Energy conservation inside the power industry depends on the promotion and application of relevant new technologies. The improvement of the equipment and technology in the power industry will help to increase the energy-consuming efficiency of China's power industry as a whole. Actively promoting new technologies, materials and techniques of energy conservation and supporting the development and application of technologies and products of energy conservation are effective measures to get good results.

"At present, a lot of transformers with high energy consumption are used in the grid, and high voltage transmitting lines cover a low share. The structure of the transformer substation is not so reasonable. It is urgent to develop the super-high voltage grid, which can increase power transmission capacity, lower the energy consumption on the lines and increase the efficiency and capacity of power supply." Yu Kunshan told the reporter.

"For many small-and-medium-sized plants, the awareness of conserving power should be enhanced. They should not pursue the short-term interests. Those regular coal-burning condensing thermal power generating units with a single turbine capacity of below 100 thousand kW, as well as regular small coal-and-fuel-burning power generating units with a single turbine capacity of below 50 thousand kW should be eliminated and shut down resolutely. This is an effective method to improve the energy consuming efficiency for the whole power industry. " Said Dai Yande.
  
Due to lack of information, out-of-date energy management, weak awareness of conserving energy and limited funding strength, it is hard to promote advanced technologies to conserve energy in many plants in China. At present, it is popular to use the contract energy control mode. This is a commercial operating mode of energy conserving project. The plant has zero investment and risks, while the EMC company takes charge of operating energy conservation projects and ensures the efficiency of conserving power. When there are profits in energy conservation, the company shares the profits with the plant, in order to gain investment returns and engage in another round of development.

Mentioning the application of the energy management in China, Yu Kunshan told the reporter, "Honesty is also needed to promote the energy-conserving technology. Due to some faulty laws and regulations, many domestic enterprises do not have good credits, which makes this managing mode hard to be promoted in a short time." He also pointed out in particular, "Some key technologies should depend on self development and research, and cannot be imported blindly from the other countries. It will help the future long-term development that the nation's key technologies should be controlled in our own hands."

Moreover, in improving the power-consuming efficiency, exercising demand side management (DSM) for the users is an important method used at present in China.

It is known that DSM is a power-consuming managing activity in which the country takes effective stimulating measures in order to lead the power users to change their power-consuming mode into using less power in peak time and more in low time. Thus the terminal power-consuming efficiency can be improved and the resource distribution can be optimized. The environment can be improved and protected, and finally the cost of power services can be minimized. In this way, the power spoilage and power demand can be cut with the same power-consuming functions, to alleviate the tense power pressure and lower the cost of supplying and consuming power. Both the suppliers and the users can be benefited in order to realize the long-term goal of conserving energy and protecting environment.

Source:China Economic
tag:China energy