The goal of "effectively alleviating" stranded generation in the renewable power sector remains under pressure despite China's progress in boosting renewable energy consumption in the first three quarters of the year, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said in a statement on Tuesday.
"Winter is typically the toughest season for power generated from wind farms and solar plants to connect to the grids. Some regions will face pressure to prevent a rebound of wind and solar waste rates," said the NEA in the statement.
Stranded generation occurs when there is not enough transmission capacity to absorb the electricity generated by wind, solar and hydropower plants, leading to high curtailment rates, particularly in Northwest and Southwest China.
While hydropower utilization rates in Southwest China's Sichuan and Yunnan Province as well as South China's Guangxi Province rose 2 percentage points during the first three quarters of 2017, the transmission grid may not be able to absorb more of the hydropower that will be available as the region comes to the end of the flood season, the NEA said.
The wind curtailment rate across the country dropped 6.7 percentage points between January and September from a year earlier, while the solar waste rate decreased 4 percentage point, the NEA said.
The risks of high power curtailment remain elevated in Northwest China's Gansu Province and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where more than 20 percent of solar power and around 30 percent of wind power failed to be taken up by the power grid in the first nine months.
Solar power waste rates rose in the smog-prone region of North China's Hebei Province and Shanxi Province, East China's Shandong Province and Northwest China's Shaanxi province, the NEA said.
"Local authorities and transmission companies should pay attention to curbing the waste of renewable energy," said the NEA.
The NEA will continue to promote renewable energy consumption by encouraging generation facilities to trade with heating companies.
China plans to eliminate 44,000 coal-fired industrial boilers and switch households to natural gas or electric heating.
The NEA will further boost cross-region power transmission and power trade by improving transmission capacity from Xinjiang to Central China's Henan Province, from Northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to East China's Zhejiang Province and from Gansu to Central China's Hunan Province.
On Monday, the NEA said that China aims to end stranded generation in the renewable energy sector by 2020.
