The new round of power grid investment roadmap is clarified

The power grid is a hub connecting electricity generation and consumption, serving as a core component in accelerating the development of a new power system. This year, the government work report emphasizes building a new power system and speeding up smart grid construction. Previously, State Grid announced a 4 trillion yuan investment plan, a 40% increase over the “14th Five-Year Plan.” Combined with investments from Southern Power Grid and local grids, China’s total grid investment during the 15th Five-Year Plan period is expected to surpass 5 trillion yuan. Why is there a further push to strengthen grid construction? Where will this record-breaking grid investment be directed?

The Power System Is Becoming Increasingly Complex

During the 14th Five-Year Plan, China built the world’s largest, most advanced, and widest-reaching transmission network, strongly supporting high-quality economic and social development. In terms of large-scale resource allocation, China has completed and put into operation 45 ultra-high-voltage transmission channels—24 DC and 21 AC—forming a “high-speed highway” for electricity across east-west and north-south directions. Currently, the nationwide “West-to-East Power Transmission” capacity reaches 340 million kilowatts, effectively optimizing the country’s electricity resource distribution.

In terms of power security and supply capacity, the main grid framework in ultra-high-voltage regions continues to improve, and distribution network reliability and capacity are steadily increasing. This effectively supports China’s annual addition of 80 million kilowatts of new electricity load, ensuring a reliable supply of power amounting to the total consumption of the US, EU, and Japan combined, with no large-scale blackouts for many years.

In promoting green and low-carbon energy transformation, China’s grid has become the world’s largest platform for renewable energy absorption, supporting over 1.8 billion kilowatts of renewable energy integration and efficient consumption, helping to exceed 20% non-fossil fuel energy consumption by 2025.

Grid development is not a one-time effort. As electricity demand continues to rise, renewable energy integration accelerates, and urban-rural power quality improves, a stronger, greener, and smarter grid has become an inevitable requirement of the times. Liu Mingyang, Deputy Director of the Power Department at the National Energy Administration, states, “Future power systems will feature high renewable penetration, high power electronics, and high supply-demand randomness, presenting greater complexity and uncertainty, which imposes new demands on grid development.”

Zhang Lin, Director of Planning and Development at the China Electricity Council, also believes that the clear electrification trend in energy production and consumption, along with rigid future power demand growth, increasing renewable energy share, and rapid cross-provincial power transmission, pose new challenges such as system stability risks and insufficient safety capacity. There is an urgent need for scientific planning and systematic development of the grid’s future direction and construction pathways.

Coordinated Development of Main, Distribution, and Microgrids

How can the next round of grid investment be targeted effectively?

According to the “Guiding Opinions on Promoting High-Quality Grid Development” jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration, by 2030, a new type of grid platform featuring a robust backbone grid and distribution network as essential foundations, supplemented by intelligent microgrids, will be initially established. The ability to optimize grid resource allocation will be significantly enhanced, with “West-to-East Power Transmission” exceeding 420 million kilowatts, inter-provincial power exchange capacity increasing by about 40 million kilowatts, and renewable energy generation accounting for around 30%.

This means that the next focus of grid construction is to build a new pattern of coordinated development among main, distribution, and microgrids, enabling each component—“main arteries,” “capillaries,” and “microcirculation”—to perform its role efficiently and in harmony. The main grid will focus on “strengthening the skeleton, ensuring safety, and maintaining circulation,” continuing to serve as the “ballast” of power supply and the “main artery” of resource dispatch, solidifying the fundamental safety of power supply and the physical basis of a unified national electricity market, supporting the broad deployment of clean energy resources.

It is understood that this year, State Grid will accelerate grid construction, starting projects such as the Zhejiang ultra-high-voltage AC ring network, Panzhihua ultra-high-voltage AC project, and speeding up the construction of projects like Datong–Huailai–Tianjin South, Aba–Chengdu East, and Western Inner Mongolia–Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei ultra-high-voltage projects, as well as the Karamay 750 kV transmission and transformation projects.

Distribution networks will focus on “strengthening foundations, improving capacity, and promoting interaction,” enhancing coupling with the main grid, supporting diversified source and load access, and enabling bidirectional interaction to support the rational development of distributed renewable energy, thereby comprehensively improving power supply reliability.

On March 1, a rare snowstorm hit Changzhi, Shanxi. During the storm, 120 transmission lines, 619 ring network cabinets, and 797 public transformers in the city operated normally, achieving “zero tripping, zero flickering, zero complaints.”

Where does this strong urban power supply guarantee come from? Wang Yusen, Deputy Director of Operations and Maintenance at State Grid Changzhi Power Supply Company, explains that the company focuses on building a “power outage-free grid,” advancing standardized line construction and upgrading old equipment, successfully completing the standardized wiring transformation of 18 line pairs within the city, significantly improving load distribution and boosting transfer capacity. To address the shortcomings of aging equipment, they accelerate distribution network upgrades, raising cableization rates to 95%, and nearly eliminating overhead lines on main urban streets. They also work to resolve issues like aging 10 kV switchgear and low automation levels, enabling fault information to be directly transmitted to repair sites with one click, greatly improving fault localization, isolation, and non-fault area power restoration efficiency.

Building a new type of grid platform is not an overnight task. Liu Mingyang states that efforts will be made to promote moderate ahead-of-schedule grid construction, strengthen major project element guarantees, accelerate preliminary work, and further increase investment in grid projects at all levels, contributing to the development of a new energy system and the modernization of China.

Comprehensive Planning and Upgrades

With rapid advances in digital technology, creating a digitally intelligent and resilient grid—fully utilizing digital and smart technologies to upgrade grid functions, operations, and services—has become an essential path to ensuring national energy security and accelerating the transition to clean, low-carbon energy.

In February, in Taihe County, Fuyang, Anhui, a distribution network line was tripped due to foreign objects falling into a transformer, causing over 30 transformers on main line No. 7 to shut down. The system automatically identified the anomaly, initiated fault isolation, and quickly restored power to non-fault areas. In just one minute, 24 non-fault transformers were transferred to other lines, significantly reducing the scope of power outage compared to manual troubleshooting that previously took hours, and greatly shortening outage times in non-fault areas, markedly improving reliability.

Chen Bin, head of the Digital and Intelligent Distribution Network Department at Fuyang Power Supply Company, says that through large-scale deployment of smart terminals and advanced distribution automation applications, Fuyang’s distribution network has achieved high-quality intelligent development, gradually forming an intelligent sensing distribution network covering urban and rural areas. Real-time data on load, equipment status, and fault information are transmitted, shifting dispatching from manual to panoramic visualization and precise analysis, enabling automatic fault isolation and rapid power restoration in non-fault zones, with a leap in power supply reliability.

The “Guiding Opinions” proposes promoting artificial intelligence and digital technology to empower grid development. It advocates integrating digital technology and data elements into grid operations, deepening AI applications in planning, equipment management, regulation, power supply services, and security. It also encourages exploring applications in quantum communication, IoT sensing, 5G-A/6G, and other advanced technologies.

Guo Jianbo, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, believes that with the rapid development of deep learning and other AI technologies, digital empowerment of the power sector—achieving informatization, digitalization, and intelligence—will be an inevitable trend in the development of future new power systems.

Despite the huge investments, experts emphasize the need for caution. They say that every penny of the new grid investment must be well spent. Avoid overemphasizing hardware at the expense of software, and ensure synchronized development of hardware, software systems, market mechanisms, and dispatching systems. Also, prevent resource waste caused by repeated, inefficient projects, adhere to unified national planning, and eliminate blind construction and inconsistent standards. Additionally, prioritize projects that benefit the people—addressing issues in old neighborhoods, rural areas, and remote regions—to ensure that the benefits of grid development reach all citizens.