July 7, 2014

China has started operating another ultra-high voltage (UHV) power line, connecting its second-largest hydropower plant in the landlocked west to a province on the east coast.

State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), the world’s biggest utility and a pioneer of UHV technology, plans to spend 620 billion yuan ($100 billion) by 2017 on 20 UHV lines in China.

The latest UHV line spans five provinces – Sichuan, Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang – and cost about 19.7 billion yuan ($3.2 billion).

It will be part of a UHV complex that will ship about 40 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year from the hydropower-rich southwestern regions to eastern consuming hubs. That would be equivalent to conserving 12.28 million tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions of 34 million tons every year.

The third such project run by SGCC, a 1,653-kilometre line that starts in the southwestern province of Sichuan and ends in Zhejiang, started operating recently.

That coincided with the start of full operations at the Xiluodu hydropower station, the country’s second largest in terms of capacity.

The UHV lines would allow China to build power plants near coal mines or gas fields before sending electricity rather than coal across country. This would free up rail capacity and could reduce the need for coal and gas imports.