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Publications

Journal Article Ahead of print

PubMed: 42162423 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10570-z

Advancing solar and wind penetration in China through energy complementarity.

Nature

Authors: Yuan Hu, Hou Jiang, Chuan Zhang, Jianlong Yuan, Mengting Zhang, Ling Yao, Qiang Chen, Jichao Wu, Hualong Zhang, Subin Ma, Xiang Li, Weiyu Zhang, Quanhua Dong, Congcong Wen, Gege Yin, Fan Zhang, Chaohui Yu, Zhijun Jin, Yu Liu

Affiliations

  • Institute of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China. Peking University Ordos Research Institute of Energy, Ordos, China.
  • Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
  • Institute of Energy, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
  • DAMO Academy, Alibaba Group, Beijing, China.
  • China Southern Asset Management Co. Ltd. Beijing, China.
  • School of Artificial Intelligence, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
  • Institute of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
  • Key Laboratory of Radiometric Calibration and Validation for Environmental Satellites, National Satellite Meteorological Center (National Center for Space Weather), China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China.
  • China Academy of Electronics and Information Technology, Beijing, China.
  • Institute of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
  • DAMO Academy, Alibaba Group, Beijing, China.
  • Peking University Ordos Research Institute of Energy, Ordos, China. Institute of Energy, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
  • Institute of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China. Peking University Ordos Research Institute of Energy, Ordos, China.

Abstract

The intrinsic variability of solar and wind energy, compounded by their rapid expansion, has intensified power curtailment challenges 1,2. Although spatiotemporal complementarity between these resources is widely recognized as a pathway to enhance renewable integration and reduce balancing requirements 3-16, existing assessments are largely based on hypothetical deployments 17-24. Consequently, how solar-wind complementarity manifests under real-world infrastructure and shapes system-level integration outcomes remains unclear. Here we develop a unified national inventory to enable a data-driven assessment of solar-wind complementarity. The inventory covers 319,972 solar photovoltaic facilities and 91,609 wind turbines in 2022, identified from sub-metre satellite imagery using a deep-learning-based framework. Using this dataset, we show that solar-wind complementarity substantially reduces generation variability, with effectiveness increasing as the geographic scope of pairing expands. At the system level, nationwide inter-provincial coordination raises effective renewable penetration by 99.88 TWh in an 80% dispatchable-flexibility system, corresponding to 9.1% of total solar and wind generation, or approximately 120 h of national average load. These findings demonstrate that energy complementarity is a scalable, system-wide mechanism for advancing solar and wind penetration, offering broadly applicable insights into the role of inter-regional coordination in enhancing renewable integration in large power systems.

MeSH

Wind