“From the perspectives of climate conditions, electric vehicle promotion, and energy structure, Hainan can take the lead nationwide in achieving a zero‑carbon power system,” said Jiang Yi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Tsinghua University, at the “Best Practices in New Energy Vehicle and Renewable Energy Integration (VGI)” thematic summit held in Haikou on September 15 during the 3rd World New Energy Vehicle Conference.

　　Against the backdrop of serving the nation’s “dual carbon” goals and supporting Hainan’s efforts to build a national ecological civilization pilot zone and a clean energy island, Southern Power Grid Hainan Power Grid Company has actively implemented the overall deployment of Southern Power Grid, proactively fulfilling its responsibilities as a central state‑owned enterprise. The company is seizing strategic opportunities in the development of a new power system, striving to be the first to establish a model province for a new power system that is green, efficient, flexible, open, and digitally empowered.

　　Resource Endowment: The Scenery Here Is Unrivaled.

　　In July of this year, Southern Power Grid Company, with a broad strategic vision and a holistic view of the entire grid, comprehensively considered factors such as investment capacity, resource endowments, and foundational conditions, and entrusted Hainan Power Grid with the important mission of building Hainan into a pilot province for a new power system.

　　Why does opportunity favor Hainan?

　　Hainan’s得天独厚 resource endowment is a dazzlingly golden calling card. As a naturally isolated geographical entity, Hainan Island falls within Solar Resource Category III, boasting vast maritime areas and abundant new energy resources such as wind power, photovoltaic energy, and ocean energy, making it well positioned to tap into the potential and meet the conditions for in-depth development of new energy.

　　Wu Mingxuan, Senior Manager at the Power Dispatch and Control Center of Hainan Power Grid Company, stated: “In 2020, the share of clean energy capacity in Hainan had already reached 67%, and the proportion of non‑fossil energy in both installed capacity and electricity generation has exceeded 50% for five consecutive years, surpassing the national average; hydropower utilization rates exceed 99.5%, while wind and solar power utilization rates have both reached 100%, essentially achieving full consumption. Hainan is at the forefront of the nation in its green energy transition, and its early lead in realizing the ‘dual carbon’ goals is clearly advantageous.”

　　In terms of flexible openness, Hainan, as a “testing ground” for the central government’s efforts to comprehensively deepen reform and opening up, enjoys an inherent advantage that is unmatched in pioneering and experimenting with higher‑level opening‑up policies under the free trade port framework, positioning it to lead comprehensive energy reform.

　　Hainan is vigorously advancing the development of an international carbon emissions trading center, exploring ways to attract overseas investors and facilitate interconnected trading in the global carbon market, thereby building a bridge for cooperation between China’s carbon market and the international carbon market. As a dialogue platform open to the world, Boao has already hosted two consecutive International Smart Grid Forums; the next step will be to plan the establishment of a New Power System International Forum, aiming to create a renowned brand for international exchanges in the energy sector and further expand China’s pace of opening up to the outside world.

　　“Given the increasingly complex dynamic behavior of new power systems, the integration of ‘data + computing power + algorithms’ is the key foundation for adapting to the evolving grid landscape. Southern Power Grid has put forward a clear vision of leveraging digital grids to drive the development of new power systems, outlining a blueprint for a digitally driven, green, and low‑carbon energy transition,” said Zheng Shengjun, General Manager of the Digitalization Department at Hainan Power Grid Company.

　　Turning to digital empowerment, Hainan Power Grid has long left a profound mark with its commitment to “enterprise digitalization and grid intelligence.” The construction of a provincial-level smart grid is taking shape, with digital transformation effectively unlocking the value of data, extending the grid’s boundaries upstream and downstream along the energy industry chain, and accelerating the evolution of grid management, operations, and service models.

　　In the first half of this year, the company accelerated the expansion of its “Southern Power Grid Cloud” platform, allocating a total of 344 cloud servers and migrating more than 20 business systems to the cloud, thereby enhancing its foundational resource support capabilities. The IoT platform was successfully deployed, with 196 components put into operation, enabling connectivity for scenarios such as intelligent distribution rooms, online substation monitoring, metering systems, substation video surveillance, and the main station for wildfire monitoring—cumulatively invoked over 200,000 times—and initially realizing the shift of business big data from “display” to “application.”

　　Seize the Opportunity: Ducks are the first to sense the warming of the spring river.

　　Since the beginning of this year, Hainan Province has fully implemented the central government’s overarching requirements for peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality, successively introducing a series of incentive policies that focus on ensuring energy security, improving the ecological environment, and transforming energy consumption patterns in both urban and rural areas, while continuing to make concerted efforts to optimize Hainan’s energy structure.

　　As a state‑owned central enterprise in Hainan that provides basic services, Hainan Power Grid Company is striving to be a pioneer in building a new power system and has positioned itself at the forefront of the energy transition toward green and low‑carbon development.

　　On the morning of August 12, the head of Hainan Yuda Construction Engineering Co., Ltd. presented a banner reading “First‑class Service, an Excellent Business Environment; All Staff Working Together to Boost the Photovoltaic Industry” to Han Bo, Deputy General Manager of the Qionghai Power Supply Bureau of Hainan Power Grid, expressing their gratitude for the bureau’s support in advancing photovoltaic project development.

　　According to the head of the Marketing Department at Hainan Power Grid Company, the 19 city and county power supply bureaus have proactively supported the construction of local photovoltaic grid‑connected projects, establishing a full‑chain service system for such projects and effectively meeting the demand for “early grid connection and early power generation” among photovoltaic projects within the province. As of August 2021, Hainan’s total photovoltaic power generation had reached 1.13 billion kilowatt‑hours, an increase of 8.9% year-on-year, ranking first in terms of the share of photovoltaic power generation among the five provinces and regions under the Southern Power Grid, thereby injecting fresh momentum into the development of Hainan as a clean energy island.

　　By 2030, Hainan will completely ban the sale of fuel-powered vehicles. As the first province in China to announce a timeline for phasing out fuel-powered cars, Hainan is leaving no stone unturned in promoting and deploying new energy vehicles. From January to August this year, 26,353 new energy vehicles were registered, representing a year-on-year increase of 152.67%, and “green‑plate” vehicles are gradually becoming more common on the roads.

　　Starting in April of this year, Hainan Power Grid Company responded to relevant national directives by collaborating with upstream and downstream enterprises in the new energy vehicle industry to promote innovation in vehicle and charging business models through market-oriented approaches, thereby advancing the development of a “single network” operational model for new energy vehicle charging and battery swapping infrastructure. On April 17, the first battery swap station jointly built by the company and NIO’s Hainan Regional Office—the NIO Battery Swap Station on Changbin Road in Haikou—officially went into operation, marking the beginning of cooperation between the two parties in multiple business areas, including the joint construction of charging and battery swap stations, the interaction between electric vehicles and the power grid, the consumption of clean energy, charging technology, and energy storage.

　　It is worth noting that on June 8, the Hainan Low-Carbon Energy Research Center was officially inaugurated at Hainan Power Grid Co., Ltd. This marks one of the company’s key initiatives to implement the central government’s strategic goals for peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality. Relying on the Southern Power Grid Company’s robust technical expertise, the Center will focus on forward‑looking and strategic research in areas such as low‑carbon energy transformation and the development of a new power system. It will also ensure the accurate collection, publication, and analysis of carbon emission data, while exploring pathways for the integrated development of new energy sources and digital grids.

　　The head of the Hainan Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment stated that the Hainan Low-Carbon Energy Research Center will be guided by the goal of building a green, low-carbon, and circular economic system, deepen research on Hainan’s low-carbon energy and power transformation, advance the development of policies for peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality, and help Hainan become a “carbon-neutral island” and a new global benchmark for zero-carbon cities.

　　The future is full of promise: boundless beauty lies atop perilous peaks.

　　Every coin has two sides. As Hainan builds a new power system, one side is bolstered by unparalleled innate advantages and late-mover benefits, while the other side is fraught with uncertainties arising from the power supply, grid, and load sides.

　　On the power supply side, new energy resources in western Hainan account for 60% of the total, while installed power capacity from these sources makes up 54% of the overall total. However, power generation is unevenly distributed, placing significant pressure on transmission and delivery. Among non-fossil power sources, nuclear power and new energy together account for more than 70%, whereas conventional hydropower and pumped storage together represent less than 30%, resulting in insufficient power supply flexibility.

　　On the grid side, Hainan’s existing power grid has limited transmission channel capacity and few available bays, making it unable to meet the requirements for the concentrated development of nuclear power and new energy sources; the largest single unit accounts for about 12% of the system’s peak load, and the issue of “large generators on a small grid” has persisted for a long time.

　　On the load side, as distributed power sources, energy storage systems, virtual power plants, and other technologies are gradually rolled out, some consumers will evolve from “pure electricity consumers” to “prosumers”—both producers and consumers of electricity. This shift in load characteristics, coupled with supply and demand dynamics, further amplifies the volatility of the electricity load.

　　“It’s both a challenge and an opportunity—these two can be mutually transformative and mutually reinforcing,” said Lu Bingyan, General Manager of the Planning Department at Hainan Power Grid Company.

　　During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Hainan plans to develop and construct 11 million kilowatts of offshore wind power, striving to bring 2 million kilowatts into operation, while adding 4 million kilowatts of new photovoltaic capacity and accelerating the development of a multi-energy complementary clean power system. The province will fully establish itself as a comprehensive smart grid demonstration province, ensuring that power outages in key industrial parks and smart grid demonstration zones are kept below 5 minutes, and building a platform-based, inherently safe power grid. Across the entire province, 337,000 charging piles and 430 public charging and battery-swapping stations will be built, achieving an electricity substitution volume of no less than 4 billion kilowatt-hours, with total installed energy storage capacity exceeding 1.6 million kilowatts. Electricity will account for more than 30% of final energy consumption, meeting the demand for “a thousand faces, a thousand solutions, multiple forms and multiple terminals” in service delivery.

　　A series of data sets reveal Hainan’s determination to accelerate the green and low‑carbon transformation of its energy sector, while also bolstering confidence in Hainan’s mission to become a pilot province for a new type of power system.

　　To accelerate the demonstration construction of Hainan’s new power system, Hainan Power Grid Company has established a leading work group headed by its principal leader. Focusing on seven key areas—energy technology innovation, green transportation development, the establishment of a comprehensive energy consumption system, the green and low‑carbon transformation of power supply, platform‑driven integrated and diversified convergence, comprehensive reform of the energy and power sectors, and the all‑round deepening of international cooperation in energy and power—Hainan is laying out its plans in a coordinated manner, with a clearly visible development path now within reach.

　　“We have launched a batch of exemplary projects for new power systems, continuously building up the strength needed to secure victory in the main battleground for future new power systems,” said Lu Bingyan. For example, in Wuzhishan City, we are leveraging small hydropower, photovoltaics, and other distributed energy sources to develop a city‑based microgrid capable of operating independently off the grid; we are taking the lead in piloting the construction of an LNG cold energy and distributed energy integrated utilization project in the Yangpu Industrial Park, aiming to create a key demonstration zone for the free trade port and a near‑zero carbon emissions pilot area on Dongyu Island in Boao; and we are selecting regions rich in renewable energy resources, such as Wenchang and Dongfang, to establish demonstration zone meteorological information application decision‑support systems and new energy operation and management platforms.

　　In the midst of profound change, we must forge new paths—truly, the greatest rewards lie at the summit of perilous peaks. The new power system has taken center stage in the transformative shift toward new energy, and with it come both opportunities and challenges as the rules of the game are being reshaped. Hainan Power Grid has set its sights on becoming a provincial demonstration model for the new power system, boldly leading the charge in building the Hainan Free Trade Port and sounding the prelude to a new era in power system development. (Guo Weihua)