Yang Kun Attends Press Conference on Building New Power System for Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality by Accelerating Pumped Storage Development

On March 19, State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) held a press conference in Beijing to announce important measures on accelerating the development and construction of pumped storage to build a new power system for carbon peak and carbon neutrality. Yang Kun, Executive Vice President of China Electricity Council, attended the meeting upon invitation.

Six important measures to accelerate the development and construction of pumped storage：

- Optimize the overall planning and speed up development. More than 20GW pump storage installed capacity with an investment of CNY100 billion are planned to be newly commissioned in new energy concentrated development areas as well as in the load centers during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.

- Carry out extensive cooperation for mutual benefits and win-win results. The pumped storage projects to be built by SGCC will be open to the public fundings to allow the access of private capital for holding shares. SGCC will work on creating a co-building & sharing mechanism with all walks of social forces to achieve win-win cooperation.

- Organize things well and construct high-quality power stations. Every power station will be built into a high-quality and eco-friendly power station.

- Scientific layout and efficiently utilizing resources. The joint dispatching of “new energy + pumped storage”, which will be boosted further, has maximized the synergistic benefits for both of them. The researches on how to put pumped storage into power market are in the pipeline and the results are expected to guide pumped storage on how to participate into system regulation more flexibly. 

- Fulfill corporation’s duty and provide professional service. With favorable conditions created to ensure power stations are connected to the grid in time and come into play as soon as possible, professional services will be provided more actively by the State Grid to various pumped storage power stations.

- Focus on independent innovation and joint efforts to tackle key technical problems. The State Grid, working with equipment manufacturers and engineering companies and supported by the power stations group, is targeting at tackling technical problems on variable speed units, large capacity units of over 400MW and localization of outlet switches, so as to realize self-independence on key technologies of pumped storage power stations.