Main Developers: Chen Guoping, Guo Qiang, Xue Feng, Dong Yu, Zhang Xing, Zhu Yiying, Li Yalou, Li Lixin, Zhang Jian, Liu Feng

Participating Organizations:China Electric Power Research Institute Co., Ltd.NARI Technology Co., Ltd.NR Electric Co., Ltd.Tsinghua UniversityNorth China Electric Power UniversityState Grid Jiangsu Electric Power Co., Ltd.State Grid Qinghai Electric Power Co., Ltd.

China’s power grid accommodates the world’s largest installed capacity of new energy. By 2025, new energy installed capacity reached 1.84 billion kW, accounting for 47% of the national total. Nevertheless, large-scale grid integration of new energy poses unprecedented challenges to grid security, efficient energy absorption and sustainable development. Connected to the grid via power electronic converters and transmitted over long distances, new energy generation brings microsecond-level electromagnetic transient processes, which have become a critical factor affecting the security and stability of large power grids. Traditional millisecond-level simulation tools cannot accurately characterize complex system features. In addition, the characteristics of new energy lead to complicated cascading failures with wide influence ranges, while conventional local prevention and control strategies fail to cope with wide-area fault shocks. Featuring prominent volatility and uncertainty, new energy absorption heavily relies on flexible regulation resources. Traditional deterministic balance theories and provincial-resource-based regulation methods are no longer applicable. In recent years, major blackouts triggered by high-penetration new energy have occurred frequently worldwide, fully demonstrating that operation control of power grids with massive new energy integration is a world-class challenge.

Targeting major national strategic demands and supported by the National Key R&D Program of China, the project team carried out joint research for years, reconstructed an operation control framework featuring Simulation & Characterization — Security Defense — Balanced Regulation, and achieved three core technological breakthroughs:

First, breakthroughs in full electromagnetic transient simulation technology for large power grids.The team proposed the lossless decoupling theory and highly stable solution algorithm for discontinuous high-order time-varying equations of power systems, lifting the capability of electromagnetic transient simulation to the 100,000-node level. The world’s first industrial basic software for full electromagnetic transient simulation of large power grids was independently developed, realizing a generational upgrade of large grid simulation from millisecond level to microsecond level.

Second, breakthroughs in wide-area coordinated security defense technology.The team revealed new instability mechanisms under the coupling of electromagnetic and electromechanical characteristics of new energy power grids, put forward a progressive dissipation method for transient impact energy at the device, local and wide-area levels, and established a wide-area coordinated security defense system covering six major regional power grids. Its capacity to withstand fault shocks far exceeds overseas counterparts, raising the cross-regional secure power transmission capacity by 54.54 million kW.

Third, breakthroughs in multi-timescale probabilistic balanced regulation technology.A probabilistic balance theory for systems with strong uncertainties was proposed. Fully self-developed dispatch and decision-making solvers were developed to break overseas technological monopolies, with efficiency 33% higher than leading international technologies. The developed large-grid balanced regulation system boasts over ten times stronger resource regulation capacity compared with foreign solutions, enabling efficient absorption of new energy with a daily fluctuation of 360 million kW.

By integrating the three systems above, the project established an integrated operation control system of Characterization — Defense — Regulation, covering more than 60,000 substations and hundreds of thousands of new energy power stations within State Grid’s service territory. In the past three years, the system has successfully handled all 383 severe faults of State Grid, regulated and absorbed 3.7 trillion kWh of new energy with an absorption rate exceeding 95%. It has supported State Grid to operate the world’s largest grid in terms of new energy absorption without major blackouts. The achievements have been deployed across 31 provincial-level regions in China and supported the large-scale development, safe and efficient utilization of domestic new energy. The technologies have also been exported to Pakistan, Egypt and other countries, supporting the construction of major local power projects and secure and stable grid operation, serving the national Belt and Road Initiative.