Regional coal power over capacity assessment in China from 2020 to 2025

The calculation results for each province (Fig. 5) show that the installed reserve margin of most provinces is concentrated between 20% and 50%. Guizhou and Guangxi, which are hydropower base provinces, and Xinjiang, which is a major energy exporting province, had installed reserve margins exceeding 50%. The provinces with installed reserve margins of less than 20% were mainly concentrated in the central region, such as Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi, and the eastern region, such as Zhejiang, Anhui, and Shanghai. The conditions inside different regions were also diverse. For example, the installed reserve margin of various provinces in North China exhibited great imbalance. Inner Mongolia (40.65%) and Shanxi (46.95%) had much higher installed reserve margins than the other because these two provinces were among the regions with the most abundant power generation resources, but their own economies were not well developed. In this sense, even in the case of large-scale power transmission, the huge local power installed capacity cannot be completely utilized. The situation in Beijing was the opposite. As the most developed region in China, Beijing’s own power generation resources were scarce, and coal power had been eliminated. Beijing’s power supply relied heavily on external power, so it had the lowest installed reserve margin in North China (22.27%). The provinces in Central China have a relatively close installed reserve margin, with the lowest rate of 15.85% in Hubei Province and only 20.41% in Henan Province. As mentioned above, these provinces generally face a shortage of local fossil fuels and insufficient development potential for wind power and photovoltaics, so the reserve margin is not high.