New-Type Power Grids Are Being Built Faster, Providing Solid Support for High-Quality Development

CCTV.com report (Xinwen Lianbo): The power grid, one of the “six networks,” is the “hard support” for economic and social development. From high mountains to the Gobi, from deserts to the deep sea, major power grids are being built faster across the country, as greener electricity and smarter regulation are being upgraded at an accelerating pace.

At Miyaluo Mountain in Aba, Sichuan, at an elevation of more than 3,600 meters, the Aba–Chengdu East ultra-high-voltage project, a key project in the national Southwest three-dimensional hub power grid, is entering the final sprint before commissioning. Once completed at the end of the year, it will enable clean energy from hydropower, wind and solar in northwestern Sichuan to be sent directly to load centers in Sichuan and Chongqing. It will be able to transmit more than 15 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity to the Sichuan–Chongqing region each year, helping develop the Chengdu–Chongqing Economic Circle.

At the edge of the desert in Inner Mongolia, the Mengxi–Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei ±800-kilovolt ultra-high-voltage direct-current transmission project has reached a key stage in erecting towers along the entire line. The main electricity carried by this cross-regional power “artery” will be green power from the 12-million-kilowatt Kubuqi desert, Gobi and barren-land base. When it enters operation next year, green electricity from the desert will be sent directly to Hebei, powering green and low-carbon development in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

In Xinjiang’s Gobi wind zone, civil engineering for the Hami 1,500-megawatt integrated solar-thermal and storage project was recently about 95% complete. Drawing on abundant solar resources, the project uses an innovative integrated, coordinated “photovoltaics + solar thermal + heat storage” model, enabling it to continuously deliver stable, adjustable green electricity to the grid at night or on cloudy days.

In Guangdong, construction has been completed on the Sanshan Island offshore wind power flexible direct-current transmission project, which gathers electricity from four offshore wind farms. The project has entered joint commissioning and testing of its offshore converter station. Described as the “heart of offshore power,” the converter station sends the collected wind power to land through more than 100 kilometers of submarine cable and connects it to the grid. Once commissioned, it will be able to transmit about 6 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity to the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area each year, enough to meet the annual electricity needs of 2 million households there.

New progress has been made in building a digital, smart power grid. Recently, Zhejiang’s virtual power plant completed a new round of interaction with the main power grid, routinely participating in market regulation on both the generation and consumption sides. Using intelligent control powered by a large artificial-intelligence model, it predicts changes in electricity demand in real time and quickly provides solutions to enable the rational allocation and use of surplus power. China has now built more than 530 virtual power plants. By 2030, the maximum regulation capacity of virtual power plants nationwide is expected to exceed 50 million kilowatts.