In Hubei, Tourist Boats Become Part of the Power Grid
At the Qingjiang Gallery scenic area in Yichang, Hubei, tourist boats shuttle along a river gorge lined with autumn colors. The docks have been busy, but the charging posts that feed the boats are now doing a second job: helping keep the regional power grid steady.
The port’s ship-to-shore charging piles have been connected to a virtual power plant developed by the Hubei branch of the State Grid’s electric power research institute. The system carries the name chong huan an chu — charging, swapping, shore-side and storage — and it is built to issue frequency-regulation commands at one-second intervals. The connection means shore power has formally joined Hubei’s virtual power plant, according to a report from October 28.
A virtual power plant is not a physical station. It is a software platform that gathers small, scattered loads — factory motors, batteries, electric-vehicle chargers and now boat chargers — and coordinates them so that together they behave like one large, adjustable power source. When the grid’s frequency wobbles, the platform tells those loads to draw more or less electricity within moments.
Shore power fits that role well because it is a flexible, interruptible load. A boat charging at the dock can absorb power when the grid has a surplus and ease off when demand spikes. The Hubei project says the charging piles can respond to a frequency command almost instantly, adjusting power at the moment the grid’s frequency fluctuates. That gives the scenic area a reliable supply for its own operations while also helping stabilize the wider network.
Yichang sits on the Yangtze River and the Qingjiang is one of its tributaries, a region known for karst cliffs and clear water. The scenic area’s electric boats are part of a broader push to cut diesel use at docks and on the water. Charging posts along the riverbank let tour boats top up between trips, and linking them to the grid’s regulation market gives the operator a reason to stay plugged in.
Hubei is not alone in testing the idea. Virtual power plants have spread across several Chinese provinces as grid operators look for cheap, fast ways to balance supply and demand without building new power stations. The loads they aggregate are small individually — a few hundred kilowatts at a port, a cluster of chargers at a shopping mall — but together they can add up to a meaningful reserve.
According to the report, the frequency-regulation resource pool in Hubei’s virtual power plant now has a total capacity of 14.37 kilowatts, a figure that likely reflects a reporting unit used by the project rather than the scale of the whole province. The pool includes a mix of industrial and commercial loads, and shore power is the newest addition.
For the scenic area, the arrangement promises a more dependable power supply during peak tourist season, when boats run frequently and the dock’s chargers are in constant use. For the grid, it adds another lever to pull when frequency drifts. The next test will be whether more ports and marinas sign up, and whether the response times hold up on days when the river is crowded and the grid is tight.