Economic Study on Replacing Thermal Power Generation with Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity at Ultra-High Voltage Power Export Bases

Under the dual carbon strategy, transmitting abundant renewable energy resources from three northern regions of China to eastern coastal areas of China via ultra-high voltage transmission lines has become a key means of achieving energy transition. Traditional Desert-Gobi-Wasteland power export bases typically rely on thermal power as a regulating power source. Based on this fact, to further increase the proportion of renewable energy in power transmission channels, this study proposes replacing part of the thermal power with pumped-storage hydropower as a regulating power source, using the northern desert base in Gansu Province as a typical case study. The results show that, under reasonable conditions of curtailment rate and power supply reliability, partial replacement is economically feasible.