China's State Grid eyes to triple UHV lines by 2012

BEIJING, Feb 26 - The State Grid Corp of China, China's leading grid operator, aims to at least triple its ultra-high voltage (UHV) power transmission lines by 2012, a company official said on Thursday.

"We plan to have 17,600 kilometres of UHV lines by 2012," Lu Jian, head of Development and Strategic Planning Department with the grid, told the 2nd Annual Power Transmission and Distribution Summit in Beijing.

This would triple the lines in use and under construction by the grid, as the firm is eager to boost its ability in trans-regional power transmission.

The company started operating China's first UHV line in January that spans 640 kilometres from northern Shanxi province to central Hubei province and has planned to invest about 100 billion yuan in the next three or four years for UHV lines.

It has started building two UHV direct current lines, linking hydropower-rich Sichuan in southwestern China to energy-hungry Jiangsu and Shanghai in the east, with each extending more than 2,000 kilometres and expected to cost 40 billion yuan in total.

UHV lines allow for heavy flows of electricity with significantly lower loss during transmission, suitable for countries with vast land masses but uneven energy resource distribution.