meteringchina.com, June 2 – News from State Grid Corp of China (SGCC) recently aunounced that they plan to build “Strong & Smart Grid” by 2020. Just like their international counterparts, China will begin by developing standards that can be adopted throughout China. The goal is to complete the smart grid project in 2020, according to Liu Zhenya, president of the State Grid Corporation of China, the largest power distributor in the country.
As per the announcement, China’s massive smart grid project will proceed in 3 key development periods from this year. During 2009-2010, detailed layouts and pilot projects will be launched to test related standards and products as well as to improve them. And the full scale deployment is expected to take place in 2011-2015 by speeding up the constructions of ultra-high voltage (UHV) power lines and the reconstruction of distribution grids in urban and rural areas. From 2016 to 2020, the unified “Strong & Smart Grid” will fully cover the jurisdictional region of SGCC and global leading technogies and equipments will be deployed and installed to realize the ambition.
The Chinese power grid is currently made up of 1.18 million kilometres of old transmission lines that carry around 3 million gigawatts of electricity throughout the country. Almost 7 percent of that amount is lost from inefficient power transfer. At the same time the demand for power in the country is expected to double by the year 2020.
“A smart grid is an inevitable choice for China to address issues in its power industry and develop a lower-carbon economy,” said Jiao Jian, an industrial analyst. Much of China’s power is generated by dirty coal plants. The government has stated that it wants to clean up its act by boosting renewable power generation to 15 percent of the total power supply by 2020. Chinese smart grid proposals call for the integration of renewable power sources, including wind and solar. The current power grid isn’t able to efficiently integrate intermittent power generation from wind turbines or solar panels.
The smart grid proposals will certainly increase Chinese investment in its power industry. For years the sector has suffered from lacklustre funding that resulting in blackouts and the infamous infrastructure collapse during the snow storms in 2008. Huang Shouhong, a power equipment analyst, believes that China will have to spend up to 68 billion yuan ($10 billion) annually on smart grid development from 2011 to 2020 and China may spend 4 trillion yuan on the overall power grid from 2009 to 2020, Investments of that magnitude would certainly have a positive effect on Chinese manufacturers of power transmission and automation equipment. Foreign manufacturers are noticing as well. China’s power infrastructure will be brought into the digital age in ways that enhance efficiency and secure the entire power grid.
