Energy Transition Measures in the Aluminum Industry: Integrated Energy System Solutions for Zero-Carbon Industrial Parks [[SMM Aluminum Conference]]

On April 16, at the AICE 2025 SMM (20th) Aluminum Industry Conference & Aluminum Industry Expo - Alumina and Aluminum Raw Materials Forum, hosted by SMM Information & Technology Co., Ltd. (SMM), SMM Metal Trading Center, and Shandong Aisi Information Technology Co., Ltd., and co-hosted by Zhongyifeng Jinyi (Suzhou) Technology Co., Ltd. and Lezhi County Qianrun Investment Promotion Service Co., Ltd., Yi Kang, Director of Industrial and Commercial Energy Storage Solutions at the Integrated Energy Business Unit of CRRC Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Research Institute Co., Ltd., elaborated on how new energy enterprises can promote the low-carbon transformation of green electricity.

Background and Significance

► Development Background

At the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, General Secretary Xi Jinping declared: "China will peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060."

The State Council's "2024-2025 Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction" sets a target of approximately 20% non-fossil energy consumption by 2025, along with 27 key tasks across 10 major initiatives, including energy conservation and carbon reduction in industries such as steel, petrochemicals, and chemicals.

China's "30/60 Dual Carbon Goals" and "Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction"

On March 11, 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and ten other departments issued the "Implementation Plan for High-Quality Development of the Aluminum Industry (2025-2027)."

By 2027, the proportion of production capacity above the energy efficiency benchmark level in the aluminum industry will increase to over 30%, and the proportion of clean energy use will exceed 30%.

Accelerating the construction of zero-carbon industrial parks will become a key focus for implementing precise emission reductions and achieving carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals.

Driven by both policies and demand, accelerate the construction of zero-carbon industrial parks.

National and local policies emphasize the construction of zero-carbon industrial parks, with 2025 designated as the "first year of zero-carbon industrial park construction."

► Application Background

Pain Points in the Aluminum Production Industry

The aluminum production industry is characterized by high energy consumption, high carbon emissions, and low energy utilization efficiency.

It is imperative to leverage integrated energy systems to create zero-carbon aluminum industrial parks.

► Integrated Energy Systems for Zero-Carbon Industrial Parks

Zero-carbon industrial parks: These parks aim to achieve "zero carbon emissions" by offsetting all carbon emissions through collaborative efforts among multiple stakeholders across the industrial ecosystem chain, supported by clean energy technologies, carbon recycling, and energy storage and exchange throughout the entire life cycle of park planning, construction, and operation.

The core of zero-carbon industrial parks is to construct integrated energy systems primarily based on renewable energy.

Integrated energy systems for zero-carbon industrial parks: Features include integrating technologies such as new energy power generation, diversified energy storage, and carbon recycling within the system based on a multi-energy complementary approach, while considering various zero-carbon models like carbon neutrality and carbon recycling externally. This enables integrated planning and coordination of energy demand and supply within the park.

Integrated energy systems provide strong support for the construction of low-carbon industrial parks.

Construct integrated energy systems that are renewable energy-led and multi-energy complementary to create zero-carbon industrial parks.

► Significance of Zero-Carbon Industrial Parks

Energy Conservation and Consumption Reduction: Enterprises can reduce energy costs, improve efficiency, and enhance competitiveness by managing and optimizing energy use and constructing distributed energy systems.

Carbon Emission Reduction: Enterprises can reduce carbon emissions, improve environmental performance, and address "carbon tariff" issues by increasing the use of green electricity and direct green electricity supply.

Stable Power Supply: Enterprises can improve the reliability and disaster resilience of their power supply, as well as manufacturing efficiency, by diversifying energy supply and deploying energy storage.

Zero-carbon industrial parks reshape the competitiveness of the aluminum industry throughout its entire life cycle.

System Solutions

Integrated Energy Solutions - Overall Architecture for Full Life Cycle Solutions of Zero-Carbon Industrial Parks

Complete the construction of zero-carbon industrial parks throughout their entire life cycle through preliminary inventory and planning, mid-term implementation, and post-implementation certification.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Carbon Inventory & Carbon Neutrality Planning

Conduct carbon inventories for existing industrial parks or estimate carbon emissions for proposed parks, and plan and implement carbon reduction pathways based on inventory results.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Integrated Energy Solutions

Integrated Energy Systems

► Create an integrated energy system for "generation, grid, load, storage, and control" within the park.

► Optimize dispatching, demand management, and coordinated control of "generation, grid, load, and storage" within the park using a platform as the core link; use the platform as a window for energy and carbon trading externally and to accept direct green electricity supply.

Build an integrated energy system to uniformly plan, construct, and operate park energy facilities, reducing energy investment, lowering energy costs, and decreasing regional carbon emissions.

Integrated Energy Solutions - System Advantages

Safer Systems: Intelligent DC arc detection technology, active arc protection, and millisecond-level power cutoff; multiple active safety designs + a pyramid-style fire protection system to reinforce energy storage safety; 3D comprehensive situation awareness for intelligent early warning of core equipment.

More Reliable Power Supply: High/low voltage ride-through capability with 30ms reactive power support and 1s response for AGC/AVC dispatching; minute-level black start capability and seamless switching between grid-connected and island modes; application of control methods such as virtual inertia and model predictive control to achieve microgrid system stability.

Lower Levelized Cost of Electricity: A two-layer optimization model achieves optimal configuration and optimized dispatching of microgrid system capacity; charging/discharging volume increased by ≥8%; M♦♦T tracking achieves 99.9% system efficiency; dynamic demand control + diversified coordinated control technologies enhance microgrid revenue.

Smarter Operation and Maintenance: Strict classification of fault types, intelligent fault alarms, and overall fault management; advance creation and automatic association of operation and maintenance work orders with multiple notification modes; permanent storage of alarm information for big data storage and quick data localization.

Provide high-safety, high-reliability, high-revenue, and smarter products and technologies.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Generation: Distributed Power Sources + Direct Green Electricity Supply

New Energy Supply System: Leverage CRRC Zhuzhou Institute's distributed PV solutions and decentralized wind power solutions to create a distributed new energy supply system within the park; leverage CRRC Zhuzhou Institute's centralized PV solutions and centralized wind power solutions to create centralized wind and solar power bases outside the park for direct green electricity supply. The new energy supply system reduces energy costs and carbon emissions within the park, laying a solid foundation for creating a zero-carbon industrial park.

Distributed power sources within the park and direct green electricity supply outside the park reduce grid electricity purchases and create a zero-carbon industrial park.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Grid: AC Microgrid

An AC networking solution that highly integrates the generation-grid-load-storage system, ensuring stable power supply and cost efficiency through day-night switching modes.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Grid: DC Microgrid

The power router supports AC/DC, multi-port, and multi-voltage access, serving as the core equipment for constructing AC/DC hybrid microgrids. It enables key functions such as power collection, transmission, storage, and distribution within the system, significantly improving operational efficiency.

♦ Simplified Access for Generation, Load, and Storage: Provides simplified networking solutions for multiple energy types (wind, PV, fuel cell cogeneration), diverse energy storage forms, and different loads, reducing conversion losses and improving efficiency by over 2 percentage points.

♦ Prefabricated Elastic Deployment: Adopts a high-frequency isolation scheme to achieve "silicon replacing copper," significantly reducing transformer volume and weight, decreasing floor space by over 40% compared to traditional solutions, and lowering construction costs.

♦ Intelligent Power Management: Full control of energy flow at each port, convenient and safe rapid fault isolation and protection; value-added services based on energy management systems to diversify revenue streams.

The DC networking microgrid solution improves efficiency by over 2%, reduces floor space by 40%, and saves 30% on cable costs.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Load: Industrial Energy Consumption Characteristics

Energy Consumption Characteristics of the Park:

Major energy-consuming processes such as electrolytic cells and roasting furnaces are predominantly DC loads, with a high proportion of DC power consumption in the entire aluminum production process. AC power supply systems require rectification.

Logistics and transportation exhibit an electrification trend, with future transportation energy consumption primarily relying on electricity, and high-power charging piles mainly using DC.

The electricity generated by new energy power generation systems is DC, which normally needs to be inverted to AC for power supply.

In response to the load characteristics of the park, adopt AC/DC networking, combined with DC power generation from new energy sources, to provide DC power supply to the park, reducing inversion and rectification losses and improving energy utilization efficiency.

Construct a new energy power supply microgrid system tailored to the power consumption characteristics of the aluminum production industry to reduce power conversion losses.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Storage: Electrochemical Energy Storage Systems

Park Energy Storage Systems: A full spectrum of user-side products, including distributed energy storage cabinets, large string energy storage containers, and high-voltage cascading systems, covering a wide voltage range from 400V to 35kV. These systems reduce energy costs in the park through peak-valley arbitrage, demand management, demand response, and dynamic capacity expansion, with plans to increase revenue from virtual power plants in the future. They can also serve as emergency power sources when necessary, enhancing power supply safety.

Construct user-side energy storage to reduce energy costs and enhance power supply safety.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Energy Management Platform

Achieve optimized dispatching of integrated energy and low-carbon economic operation through supporting technologies such as "cloud computing, big data, IoT, mobile internet, AI, and blockchain," reducing overall energy consumption in the park system by 5%.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Virtual Power Plants/Green Electricity Trading/Carbon Trading

Virtual Power Plants: The platform splits virtual power plant management scenarios and multi-province trading functions into microservices, adapting to various types of equipment and business scenarios and flexibly expanding multi-province business usage.

Green Electricity Trading: Distributed new energy can be aggregated through virtual power plants to participate in green electricity trading.

Carbon Trading: Carbon assets, such as carbon allowances and CCERs, will possess commodity value and can be traded in the carbon market to generate profits.

By constructing an integrated energy platform and conducting businesses such as load aggregation and virtual power plants, improve overall energy utilization efficiency and expand revenue sources.

Integrated Energy Solutions - Carbon Neutrality Certification

It elaborated on the first type: carbon neutrality commitment declaration and the second type: carbon neutrality achievement declaration.

Remaining carbon emissions are offset through carbon allowances and other means to achieve a fully low-carbon/zero-carbon industrial park.

Application Cases

It introduced the industry status, a four-line AC/DC hybrid networking microgrid system for semiconductors, the Kunshan Kesen PV-ESS integrated microgrid system, and the Huadian zero-carbon construction site off-grid microgrid system, among others.

Finally, it introduced an overview of CRRC Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Research Institute Co., Ltd., including its technological innovation and industrial overview.

》Click to view the special report on the AICE 2025 SMM (20th) Aluminum Industry Conference & Aluminum Industry Expo