Energy Storage Requirement and System Cost in Achieving Net Zero Emission with Wind and Solar Power

Under the carbon neutrality goal, wind and solar power have become one of the most important options for decarbonizing the power system. This article takes the power system predominated by wind and solar power as an example to construct a two-stage production simulation model. The load duration curve is used to optimize hydropower and other power sources that need to consider energy balance in a time period. The time-series load curve is used to optimize coal-fired power, nuclear power and other conventional power sources output. A provincial level large-scale power system is taken as example, and different capacity combination scenarios of wind and solar power are set up to do daily simulation and yearly simulation. The proposed production simulation model is used to study the energy storage configuration and power supply cost changes along with the increase of capacities and generations of wind and solar power while approaching to near-zero emissions. Research results show that even if the total capacities of wind and solar power reach 226% of the maximum power load, fossil energy generation still accounts for 9%. System operating costs rise steadily as the proportion of wind and solar power capacity increasing. There has a saturation effect on replacing fossil energy generation by increasing wind and solar power capacities, as well as the energy storage to promote the consumption of wind and solar power.