(Bloomberg) -- While much of the rest of the world tries to build more renewables, China is figuring out how best to make use of an abundance of them.

After record installations of solar and wind power last year, several regions in China have shown strains handling the new surges of electricity that come and go based on weather conditions. The country needs to keep building new power infrastructure and improve policies and market rules to keep such strains from slowing the energy transition, energy and grid officials said in a panel discussion at Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan, China, on Tuesday.

“Everyone advocates low-carbon transformation,” said Qian Chaoyang, president of China Southern Power Grid. “We also need to vigorously promote the interconnection of power grid infrastructure.”

The state of China’s grid has become one of the key focal points in the fight against climate change. President Xi Jinping has made it clear he doesn’t want the country to slow its record renewable installations, so it will be up to grid operators to figure out how to shift the electrons across time and space.

One solution is to build more energy storage. China nearly quadrupled its battery storage capacity last year, and Qian on Tuesday called for more financial support for pumped hydro systems that use water and gravity to save excess power until it’s needed.

Another solution is to enhance geographic connections. Liu Zhenya, former chairman of State Grid Corp. of China, said the country should push for a denser transmission network between the northwest, which is rich in coal and renewable power sources, and the southwest, which is reliant on hydropower and suffered electricity shortages during a drought in 2022. That would eliminate the need to build energy storage in the northwest and more power plants in the southwest, saving billions of yuan in investment, he said.

Market forces can also play a part. Reliability has a value, so power plants that can turn on and off when needed should be paid for that, said Shi Bing, vice president of China General Nuclear Power Corp. At the same time, correctly pricing carbon emissions can play a role in optimizing different energy sources, said Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the People’s Bank of China.

Finding a solution in many parts of Asia will be more difficult than in the US and Europe, because rapidly growing economies mean clean energy needs to not only keep up with new demand, but exceed it to be able to displace fossil fuels. Innovation is the only way it will happen, Liu said.

The effort will be closely watched by other governments as well. After the world vowed to triple renewable capacity by 2030, global leaders will be looking to Beijing for steps to follow and paths to avoid as they ramp up their own renewable installations. 

“An energy transition with economic growth requires a lot of investment and technological growth,” Liu said.

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