WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Through China's two-phase National Electrification Plan, implemented in 2001, more than a million people now have electricity, but 30 million rural Chinese are still without power, said David Kline, senior project leader for National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Phase I of the NEP electrified more than 1,000 townships in western China using power grids. The systems all run on renewable energy sources, including hydropower, photovoltaic solar power and wind-solar hybrid power, according to a report by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
A major problem in implementing Phase II is how to provide energy to villages and houses in the mountains in far west China. The locations are simply too far away from the grids to connect them by wire and the cost would be astronomical, Kline said.
The U.S. Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory sponsored a partnership with China's Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to develop a design tool. Its purpose is to provide guidelines for China to use in design, finance and support of off-grid systems using only renewable energy.
"We made the assumption that all the systems will be renewable components only, a little bit wishful thinking that they'll stick to that and make the systems renewable," Kline said during a seminar at the NREL's Washington office last week. "We didn't include any possibility for diesel engines or other fossil fuel components, although we can do that in the model."
Critics argue that it would be better to use fossil fuels.
"The NREL's solution to every problem is renewable energy," said Jerry Taylor, senior fellow at the libertarian CATO Institute. "The Chinese have the same choice as the United States to either allow the market to dictate energy sources or the government, and they should rely on the market."
The model created by NREL and the IEE, called HOMER, finds the system that is feasible, that can serve the load and costs the least, taking into account both the capital and running costs. Kline worked with researchers from the IEE, taking into consideration a range of conditions and variables.
In a year represented by 8,760 hours, village size, energy load curves and costs of components are put into a micro-power optimization model. For solar systems, the average annual solar radiation is included; for mini-grids, its battery characterization and for wind systems, it's the average annual wind speed, Kline said.
The results determine the least-cost, most efficient and sustainable system design. Results also include, more specifically, the grant required from the Chinese government for the capital cost, he said.
HOMER shows that for off-grid systems, or single-home systems, the best choice tends to be a solar or wind system. The high costs of renewable energy technology are still more affordable than connecting individual homes to mini-grids.
"Renewable energy can make economic sense for off-grid locations, but it's only a market niche in so far that grid is absent," Taylor of Cato said. "It loses the economic appeal when lines are brought in."
For an off-grid, individual home system, the total price would vary from 57 cents to $1.04 per kilowatt-hour. The price varies depending on the availability of different renewable energy sources.
An example given at the seminar shows that if a small wind turbine is added to a system using only photovoltaic solar power, the price is reduced by 14 cents per kwh.
Mini-grid systems would be used in villages with 50 homes or more. In a village with a mini-grid system powering 100 homes the cost would be between 87 cents and $1.09/kwh.
Kline suggested putting in a margin of error for capacity and overbuilding the mini-grids instead of not having enough capacity. More work needs to be done, he acknowledged -- the system isn't perfect and there are uncertainties, but they are confident it could possibly be used in the future to build systems.
"What we hope is that the methods, guidance and tool that we've developed with our Chinese partners will get adopted as an official part of implementing regulations of the renewable energy law," Kline said.
There is a small amount of carry-over funding from the research grant, Kline said, enough to put a $5,000 contract in place with the Institute of Electrical Engineering in Beijing.
Kline and his associates want to run some more cases to cover more situations in the model's data including cases using biomass. They also want to further refine the analysis and hold additional workshops to convince China's National Development and Reform Commission to use HOMER when they implement regulations.
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