Progress and prospects of flexible operation for coal-fired power plants facing increasing renewables
Yilihamu Yiming, Wenbo Gu, Zipeng Zheng, Weixuan He
Abstract
Faced with global warming trend, many coal-frontier countries including China have gradually come to develop flexible power generation to support a novel energy system with increasing renewable energy. While the existing literature extensively discusses various technologies of flexible coal-fired power generation and energy storage, there remains a critical gap in systematic research that holistically assesses the current landscape of flexible generation technologies in coal-fired power plants while delineating actionable pathways for their evolution in low-carbon energy systems. In this paper, current situations from combustion side and pulverized coal side retrofit, wide load denitrification retrofit, turbine side flexibility retrofit, and energy storage coupled peak shifting and fast variable load response technology are illustrated first respectively. In addition, this paper presents a new perspective on the future direction of flexibility retrofit, including the integration of energy storage to enhance operational flexibility. This review can provide a reference for the research and development of deep peak shaving and flexible retrofit technologies for power generation for pulverized coal boiler generating units in the future.