State Grid Corp vows investment to stabilize consumption, employment

State Grid Corp of China will further step up investment in domestic grid construction this year to stabilize power consumption as well as employment in the country, said a top company official.

The Beijing-based State-owned company said that it will invest an all-time high of more than 520 billion yuan ($76.95 billion) in power grid projects this year, after a 500-billion-yuan investment in 2022, considering power consumption this year is expected to further pick up as follow-up measures for stabilizing the economy have driven the economy to recover, Xin Baoan, chairman of the centrally administered SOE, was quoted as saying by China Media Group.

Xin said the company will start the construction of five pumped-storage power stations in 2023 and put four more into operation. The installed capacity of pumped-storage power stations operated by State Grid Corp will exceed 38 million kilowatts by the end of this year.

The world's biggest pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant, the Fengning pumped-storage power station in Hebei province, is currently carrying out installation and commissioning work, said the company, its operator.

With a designed annual power generation capacity of 6.612 billion kilowatt-hours and an annual pumped-storage power capacity of 8.716 billion kilowatt-hours, it also has the largest pumping storage underground plant.

China is expected to further step up the development of pumped-storage hydroelectricity during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), as part of the efforts to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

According to Luo Zuoxian, head of intelligence and research at the Sinopec Economics and Development Research Institute, massive amounts of flexible electricity supplies will become increasingly important for the grid as renewable power capacity in China continues to grow.

Stable operation of the grid plays a key role in dealing with the fluctuating output of intermittent energy sources, he said.

According to Xin, as China's largest State-owned utility firm, the company currently sees new energy installations connected to the grid exceeding 670 million kW, with a utilization rate above 97 percent.

"With the rapid development of renewable energies in the country, speeding up the consumption of green power plays a critical role in the country's low-carbon transition," he said.

The company currently runs 33 ultra-high-voltage transmission lines. Cross-provincial power transmission capacity has exceeded 300 million kW, said the company.