During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China's investment in new power grids will exceed 5 trillion yuan, driving a total upstream and downstream scale of over 10 trillion yuan and directly creating over one million infrastructure jobs. A new power grid system characterized by the coordinated development of the main power grid, distribution network, and smart microgrids is rapidly reshaping the nation's energy arteries. The National Energy Administration stated that China will have initially completed the construction of its new power grid by 2030.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, total investment in China's power grid is expected to exceed 5 trillion yuan, averaging 1 trillion yuan annually, far exceeding the 553.6 billion yuan annual average during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. Funds will be primarily invested in ultra-high-voltage (UHV) transmission channels, inter-provincial power transfer projects, urban distribution network upgrades, county-level power grid transformation, and addressing frequent power outages in rural areas, narrowing the power supply gap between urban and rural areas.

UHV "Flash Transmission"

Relying on the UHV "power highway," electricity from Xinjiang can be "flash-transmitted" across 3,300 kilometers to Anhui in 0.01 seconds, with an annual transmission volume exceeding 60 billion kilowatt-hours. Starting from the ten major clean energy bases, 15 new ultra-high-voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission lines will be put into operation during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, transmitting green electricity from the west to load centers in the central and eastern regions.

Microgrid and Distribution Network Upgrades

In Chengdu, Sichuan, a large-scale energy storage cell factory is equipped with a smart microgrid, consuming 160 million kWh of green electricity annually and reducing carbon emissions. Residential communities in Chengdu's central urban area are undergoing grid-based transformation, aiming to build a "hand-in-hand" grid structure, increasing power supply reliability to 99.999% and reducing the average annual power outage time per household to within 6 minutes, reaching the level of advanced cities worldwide. Keywords: UHVDC "power highway," main distribution and microgrid coordination, 5 trillion yuan investment, green electricity

Millions of Job Opportunities

The construction of new power grids has created new positions such as power aggregation operators and power reliability managers, with infrastructure investment directly creating over one million jobs. By 2025, China's total electricity consumption will exceed 10 trillion kWh for the first time, with nearly 4 kWh of every 10 kWh being green electricity. The installed capacity of renewable energy in China has reached approximately 60%, and the new power grid is becoming a solid foundation for energy transformation.Editor/Sunyaxin