Status Quo Demand Response Mechanisms at Provincial Level of China

Developing the new power system has become a top priority to achieve the goal of "carbon peak and neutrality". However, the intermittent and fluctuating renewable energy from supply-side would dominate the new power system with less regulation capacity, which could harm the safe, stable and economic operation of the system. It is urgent to unlock the demand-side flexibility so as to make up the regulation capacity inadequacy from supply-side. The demand response (DR) would play an increasingly vital role at demand-side and its development in China is just unfolding. In order to provide a systematical overview of current status of DR practice in China, this paper investigates the state-of-the-art (in 2021 and 2022) DR mechanisms and regulations in various provinces of China, then analyzes the pilot practice of load aggregators (LA) and virtual power plants (VPP) in China, and discusses the way forward for developing various types of DR mechanisms.