Regional Security Assessment of Integrated Energy Systems with Renewables in China: A Grid-Connected Perspective

Abstract

Stable and reliable integrated energy systems are one of the major issues related to sustainable regional and national energy development. Because most existing studies are conducted on whole countries, few address the effects of regional interaction and renewable energy. Therefore, a natural disaster risk assessment model (NDRAM) combined with spatial models is used as a general systematic tool to assess and resolve regional energy security, based on a framework of resources, generation, transmission, marketing and consumption, with 17 metrics. In particular, energy systems were treated as organic connected-units and their security status was regarded as a combined result of potential hazard and system vulnerability. The proposed method was applied to evaluate and classify the security situation of 31 Chinese provinces in 2016. The results showed that transmission had the most significant impact among five major risk sources. The closer grid connections have a stronger ability to deal with risks among regions, where renewables consumption could be better stimulated cross-regionally. In terms of a regional perspective, there is still a gap among different regions, and eastern China presented higher energy risk status. The most energy-hazard provinces are mainly in the east provinces with well-developed levels in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. The least energy-vulnerable provinces are mainly in the abundant natural resources regions such as Inner Mongolia, Sichuan and Xinjiang. The NDRAM-based general model provides a systematic tool for quantitative assessment of regional energy security with a full accounting of regional interaction and renewable energy issues, which may help to develop clean energy, optimize system infrastructure and improve scientific management.