China's solar-nuclear hybrid system boosts grid reliability above 98%

Researchers at China’s Guangdong Power Grid have developed a solar-nuclear hybrid microgrid system that demonstrated over 98% power supply reliability in a one-year simulation, while reducing operational costs by about 18.7% and carbon emissions by nearly 37.1%. The system integrates 40 MW of photovoltaic (PV) capacity with a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) nuclear unit, supported by a 20 MWh lithium-ion battery and a hydrogen storage unit, to manage an average industrial load of 85 MW and a residential load of 15 MW. This hybrid approach leverages the complementary strengths of solar and nuclear power to enhance grid resilience and lower emissions. Central to the system’s success is an advanced Energy Management System (EMS) that employs a dual-layer storage strategy combining short-term battery storage and long-term hydrogen storage to balance daily and seasonal energy fluctuations. The EMS uses a sophisticated scheduling framework that integrates multi-objective distributionally robust optimization (DRO) with real-time reinforcement learning (RL