Modeling and Evaluation of Near Real-Time Carbon Emission Footprint Accounting for Flexible Operation of Coal-Fired Power Units

Much more massive renewable energy such as wind power and photovoltaic will have greater impacts on the stability of the power system in the next several decades. Coal power is currently a good and essential source of flexible regulation. However, the role of coal power units as a load-regulating power source will change their designed operating conditions and increase the carbon emissions density. This study builds a carbon emission accounting model (LCA-CUFP) on coal-fired power units with the Process Analysis method (PA). The model realizes the near real-time accounting of carbon emission footprint under the flexible operation conditions of coal-fired power units, which covers the whole life-cycle process including plant construction, raw coal production and transportation, power generation, waste treatment, and decommissioning of the power units (time-step is 15-min). Also, a 300 MW-unit was chosen in this study as a case for carbon footprint ac-counting of electricity in regular operation, deep peaking, and frequent start/stop conditions. The results show that the carbon emission share of the power generation process reaches about 98.36% of the total carbon footprint, followed by raw coal products and transportation. The carbon footprint of each kWh will increase by 8.0% in deep peaking conditions and by 6.4% in frequent start/stop (daily) conditions. The LCA-CUFP model for coal-fired power units could realize the comprehensive evaluation of the low-carbon emission reduction benefits of integrated energy bases such as integrated energy bases, and will also provide useful support for the dynamic carbon emission accounting of the regional power grid.