As an important national energy and strategic resource base, Inner Mongolia has abundant wind, solar and coal resources. In the “dual-carbon” goal to promote, in recent years, Inner Mongolia is stepping up to promote the “sand barren” large-scale wind power photovoltaic base project construction and the transformation and upgrading of traditional energy industries.

Sandbar built on the “Great Wall of Photovoltaic”

Kubuqi Desert is China's seventh largest desert, located south of the Yellow River on the northern edge of the Ordos Plateau. Its hinterland is located in Hangjin Banner, accounting for 52.2% of the total area of the flag.

“Little rain, drought, sandstorms and dust storms are almost synonymous with the Kubuqi Desert, and the impression of backward development and poverty-stricken areas is also almost a hat that can't be removed from the hometown for many years.” Inner Mongolia Huaneng Kubuqi Energy Co., Ltd. employee Wang Zheng said, with the construction of photovoltaic projects in his hometown, the environment has been a great transformation, not only effectively reduce the desert areas of sand erosion, improve the quality of life of the surrounding herdsmen, but also promote the development and utilization of new energy.

Huaneng Kubuchi Desert Ordos South New Energy Base Project is the national “Shagoe Desert” base key projects, but also China Huaneng in recent years, the largest single investment, the largest planning capacity, the construction of the highest standard of new energy base projects. The project has a total planned installed capacity of 16 million kilowatts, including 4 million kilowatts of wind power, 8 million kilowatts of photovoltaic power, 4 million kilowatts of supporting coal power, and synchronized with the configuration of energy storage and ecological governance and other projects. It is expected to provide about 27.4 billion kWh of clean electricity annually, save about 8.62 million tons of standard coal, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 23.24 million tons. It is reported that the 2 million kilowatts of photovoltaic pilot project currently under construction will be completed and connected to the grid by the end of 2024.

Li Feng, the project manager of Huaneng Kubuchi New Energy Large Base 2 Million Kilowatts PV Pilot Project, introduced that, for the deployment of photovoltaic panels in the project area, the soil conditions, the water conditions, the type of existing plant resources and the characteristics of the main road, windbreak forests, the comprehensive demonstration area and the operation and maintenance center, taking into account the biological treatment of sand and artificial sand control, the full and reasonable use of land resources, the use of photovoltaic panels to shade the effects of Using the shading effect of photovoltaic panels, large-scale planting of sand plants and shade-resistant pasture grasses, forming a demonstration base of characteristic grasses, maximizing the full combination of solar energy development and desert management, generating electricity on the panels and treating sand under the panels to create a “new model” of photovoltaic desert management and realize the multi-purpose use of one place.

Science and technology are contributing to ecological repair and new energy development in a way that cannot be ignored. “Huaneng Kubuqi desert new energy base 2 million kilowatts of photovoltaic pilot project field area of about 4 million photovoltaic panels, more than 6,300 sets of inverters, 420 sets of box transformers, but the number of operation and maintenance personnel is less than 30 people, in the face of so much equipment, rely on manual inspection and operation and maintenance work is too difficult, it is necessary to utilize the industry's most advanced intelligent operation and maintenance technology (drones, robots, intelligent sensors) and so on to realize the unmanned and less manned operation and maintenance work.” Staff Zhang Qingwei said.

It is understood that, combined with the actual management needs of the site, the pilot project has been carried out in the pilot project phase I, phase II photovoltaic field and boosting station pilot drone inspection, IV / CV automatic scanning and diagnosis, intelligent robotics applications, etc., for the subsequent base project of the number of intelligent construction experience.

Actively building a green intelligent mine

According to the project's technical team, the entire power exchange process of the power exchange mine card is extremely efficient, with a single power exchange operation taking only about 6 minutes. In the future, it is planned to deploy about 300 power-switching mining trucks and build a 50 MW-scale photovoltaic power generation system, which will prioritize the use of distributed photovoltaic for power supply, aiming to create a real green mine model. In addition, in order to overcome the instability of photovoltaic power generation, the R&D team also designed an advanced charging warehouse. The charging silo not only supports high-power rapid charging of batteries, but also all the built-in spare batteries can be used as an energy storage unit to provide reverse discharge when needed in the mine, thus effectively realizing the integrated operation of the source network and load storage.

It is reported that Huaneng Weijiaxuan open pit coal mine has built the country's first mine engineering equipment flexible lifting power exchange station and the country's first mine mobile power exchange station. This year, will vigorously promote the power exchange mine card in WeiJiaXuan open-pit coal mine scale application, is expected to be put into operation this year.

While building a green mine, Huaneng Weijia Northwest Coal and Power Company's open-pit coal mine has gradually started the construction of intelligent mines since 2018, landing more than 20 intelligent projects.

Han Fengfei, director of the mechanical and electrical department of Huaneng Weijia Northwest Coal and Power Company, introduced that the coal conveyor system has 23 belt conveyors and 15 transfer points, with a total length of about 13,179 meters. The construction of the monitor screen system, call broadcasting system, intelligent inspection robot, wire rope core belt surface non-destructive monitoring, improve the belt machine eight protection, transformed the curve of the coal drop tube and equipped with a powerless dust removal system, realizing the coal transmission system unmanned throughout the line.

At the same time, with the help of advanced information technology, Weijiaxuan open-pit coal mine comprehensively utilizes the Internet, Internet of Things, wireless communication, mobile terminals, intelligent identification and other technologies, and also realizes the management of contractors, risk classification management, hidden danger investigation management, defect management, electromechanical equipment management and other functions; through the effective linkage of various sub-systems and the closed-loop management of the whole process, it realizes the management of personnel safety, management personnel's performance of their duties, management of the whole process of operation, and the management and management of the whole process of operation. management, operation process control, dynamic safety data warning, dynamic safety monitoring; through the establishment of intelligent production safety guarantee system, including intelligent App, intelligent access control, intelligent camera, intelligent helmet and other hardware, to realize on-site and intelligent safety management.

Innovative promotion of thermal power flexibility transformation

Against the backdrop of the increasing proportion of new energy installed capacity, higher challenges have been posed to the consumption of clean energy as well as the flexible adjustment capability of traditional coal power units.

In the production plant of Huaneng Weijia Northwest Coal Power Company, there is the first set of coal power units coupled with steam molten salt thermal storage peak adjustment demonstration project, which will be put into operation in May 2023, filling the technological gaps of China's “molten salt thermal storage + hot water thermal storage auxiliary coal power peak adjustment and frequency adjustment”.

The project focuses on solving the problems of new energy consumption and the challenges of low load peaking, and through the introduction of the molten salt heat storage system, the depth of regulation of the unit has been successfully reduced from 40% to 30%, which significantly improves the acceptance capacity of new energy. The system not only reuses the stored heat, but also optimizes the regulation performance of the unit. Specifically, the stored heat can be integrated into the thermoelectric cycle after release and participate in the power generation process again, which indicates that the system will have the capability of fast regulation response in the future. In addition, the project team innovatively proposed a salt tank built-in coil type molten salt heat transfer method, and developed a single tank storage and release of heat integrated steam-molten salt-water heat transfer equipment and liquid-solid two-phase heat storage materials, these initiatives simplify the system structure, enhance system safety, effectively reduce the investment cost of molten salt, and reduce the floor space. It is reported that after the commissioning of the project, the system will be able to provide a more efficient and effective solution.

It is reported that after the project is put into operation, the peak operation of pure condensing unit coupled with molten salt heat storage is realized, and the peak capacity of the demonstration unit is increased from 60% to 75% of the rated load, and the load response rate is improved by 0.55% of the rated load/minute. The peaking capacity of the unit increased by 15% of the rated load, the new energy consumption of electricity increased by 600 million kWh per year, saving 180,000 tons of coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 300,000 tons per year.