The economic operation of battery swapping stations (BSSs) is significant for the promotion of large-scale electric vehicles. This paper develops a linear programming model to maximize the daily operation profits of a BSS by considering constraints of the battery swapping demand of users and the charging/discharging balance of batteries in the BSS. Based on the BSS configuration and data from electric taxis in Beijing, we simulate the operation situation and charging/discharging load of the BSS in nine scenarios with two ordered charging and discharging strategies. The simulation results demonstrate that the model can achieve the maximum daily profits of the BSS. According to the sensitivity analysis, the battery swapping price for batteries is the most sensitive, followed by the number of batteries in the BSS, while the operation-maintenance costs and battery depreciation costs are least sensitive. In addition, the charging and discharging of batteries in the BSS can be coordinated by increasing the battery quantity of the BSS and formulating the ladder-type battery swapping price.

China has set an ambitious target of achieving the grid parity of solar power by 2020 in the 13th Five-Year Plan. This paper estimates the levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) of centralized photovoltaic power across regions in China with the actual situation in 2016 and simulation scenarios for 2020. Results demonstrate that the LCOEs of centralized photovoltaic power will decrease considerably during the period of 13th Five-Year. Few of them are competitive with generation side electric prices in 2016 basic scenario and 2020 pessimistic situation. Sensitivity analysis reveals that utilization hour, unit investment cost, and financing cost are key driving factors.