China to Invest over $6 Billion to Upgrade Grid

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) will invest $6.62 billion in 8,390 items aiming at upgrading its nationwide electricity grids.

The investment of SGCC (Beijing) will be used to replace obsolete equipment, develop electricity transmission ability, and improve security, liability and efficiency of the grid. Currently China's electricity grids still face many problems. Sixty of the company's power plants suffer from output obstruction. There are still 95 high/low voltage electromagnetic ring networks in the whole grid, among which thirteen have bad effects on the whole network.

Equipment in use is outdated. Nearly 20% of all transmission lines need technical innovation. About 9% of all transformers and power circuit breakers have been used for over 20 years and need to be replaced. In some areas, only 70% or less of switchgears are oil-free.

The planned 8,390 items include 5,317 special technical innovation items, 1,477 large scale technical innovation items, 968 overhaul items and 628 scientific development items.

In 2007, the company is supposed to upgrade 45,000 meters of transmission line, transformers of 91.68 million kVA and 25,920 power circuit breakers. It will also finish 15 items of opening up electromagnetic ring and 23 items for reducing output obstruction.

In terms of equipment upgrading, the company will invest more in replacing high energy consuming equipment with high efficiency and environmentally friendly equipment.

The company will also accelerate its construction in a wide area measurement system (WAMS) based on a Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) and will build an online real-time supervision system for grids security. It will also improve its energy measurement system to increase accuracy, which has been a serious problem for a long time and caused much trouble nationwide.

SGCC was founded in December 2002 as a pilot state-owned corporation by the State Council, with a registered capital of $26 billion and service area covering 26 provincial regions which account for 88% of the national territory.

By the end of 2005, SGCC accumulated a total asset of 1176.7 billion yuan with a debt-asset ratio of 61.96%, and possessed 195,899 kilometers of 220kV and above transmission lines with a transforming capacity up to 616.64 GVA.

In 2005, SGCC sold electric power up to 1464.6 tWh and achieved an operation income of $94 billion with a net profit of $1.87 billion. SGCC was ranked the fortieth in the Fortune Global 500 in 2005.

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