As a major clean energy country, China's energy structure is undergoing a historic turning point, with wind and photovoltaic installed capacity surpassing thermal power, posing new challenges to the development of the power grid. What kind of new power grid will China build during the 15th Five Year Plan period? How is the current progress? Let's take a look at the journalist's frontline research.

Starting from Lanzhou and heading westward, carts loaded with wind turbine blades and photovoltaic modules drove one by one, and their destinations pointed to the same place - Tengger Desert.

The on-site manager told reporters that there are more than 500 new energy stations distributed within a radius of several hundred kilometers, and the large number of new energy stations has brought unprecedented challenges to power personnel.

At the Gansu Power Dispatching Hall, the reporter saw two graphs showing that when there is a lot of thermal power generation, the curves are relatively stable; When new energy serves as the main source of power generation, the curve is like riding a roller coaster.

Not only in Gansu, but also in China, the newly installed capacity of new energy exceeds 200 million kilowatts every year. The new type of power grid being constructed by the country aims to connect, deliver, and use these green power sources effectively. Aiming at this target, a series of tough battles are underway.

At the Shagehuang New Energy Laboratory in Gansu Province, the reporter saw that researchers have moved the entire physical power grid into the digital world and simulated more than 120 possible fault states one by one.

How can we deliver these green electricity while being able to handle it? 80% of the clean energy bases in the 15th Five Year Plan are built in the western region, but more than 70% of the electricity demand is in the central and eastern regions. It is urgent to build more high-capacity and intelligent transmission channels.

In Wuwei, Gansu Province, Gansu Electric Power's entry into the Zhejiang ultra-high voltage project site has welcomed a new independently developed equipment, which is the key to solving the problem of high proportion transmission of new energy.

These technological breakthroughs have led to a significant increase in the proportion of new energy installed capacity in this ultra-high voltage channel, rising to nearly 80%.

Starting from the deployment of the top ten clean energy bases in the 15th Five Year Plan, multiple ultra-high voltage direct current channels are being intensively constructed. During the 15th Five Year Plan period, an additional 15 such channels will be put into operation, crossing mountains and seas to transport solar thermal energy from the Gobi Desert, strong winds from grasslands, and rapids from southwestern canyons to the eastern and central regions with huge electricity demand. Such a vertically and horizontally connected power grid can not only stably capture a high proportion of new energy, but also safely, efficiently, and flexibly allocate electricity through various energy storage stations, virtual power plants, and smart microgrids.

New opportunities have also emerged. During the 15th Five Year Plan period, the investment in the new power grid will exceed 5 trillion yuan, driving the total scale of upstream and downstream to exceed 10 trillion yuan. New industrial opportunities are giving rise to more and more new positions such as power aggregation operators and power reliability managers, and infrastructure investments related to the new power grid can directly create over one million job opportunities.Editor/Gao Xue