CCTV News: As a major clean energy country, my country’s energy structure is undergoing a historic transition. Wind power and photovoltaic installed capacity have exceeded thermal power, which also poses new challenges to the development of the power grid.During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, my country will invest more than 5 trillion yuan in building new power grids.What kind of network will this investment create?Let’s go and see it together.

Starting from the top ten clean energy bases deployed in the "15th Five-Year Plan" outline, the construction of multiple UHV DC channels is being stepped up. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, 15 such channels will be put into operation.They cross mountains and seas, bringing photovoltaic light and heat from the Gobi, strong winds from the grasslands, and rapids from the southwest canyons to the eastern and central regions where electricity demand is huge.

If UHV is the "aorta", then the distribution network is the "capillary" throughout urban and rural areas.In the next five years, investment in distribution networks will account for 60% of the total investment in power grids.The city’s old lines need to be upgraded, and the county’s weak power grid needs to be repaired.By 2030, the country will be able to receive 900 million kilowatts of distributed new energy and support more than 40 million charging piles.

Going further to the end, there are smaller "microgrids".In Dongshan Village in the high mountains of Ningbo, the photovoltaic storage system generates self-generated surplus power and installs a fast isolating switch. When the large power grid fails, it can rely on its own power supply and energy storage device to provide power and operate independently.

The reporter learned from the National Energy Administration that by 2030, my country will initially complete a new power grid platform with the main power grid and distribution network as an important foundation and smart microgrids as a useful supplement. The scale of "West-to-East Power Transmission" will exceed 420 million kilowatts, supporting new energy power generation to account for about 30%.

New opportunities in the power grid

A new power grid covering the whole country is not only a hub platform for energy, but also invisible industrial networks and people's livelihood networks are being woven simultaneously behind it.What new opportunities are hidden in the power grid?

According to estimates, two large transmission towers will be built for every 1 kilometer of UHV channel construction, which will also drive the consumption of about 50 tons of special steel and drive the equipment output value to more than 10 million yuan.Take the under-construction high-voltage channel from Gansu to Zhejiang Province for example. The project has attracted more than 80 billion in upstream and downstream investment and also provided jobs for 24,000 people.

Green power is being steadily delivered, and the industry is also driven.In the Hongshagang Industrial Park in Minqin, Wuwei, giant blades, wind turbine main engines, and UHV supporting equipment come off the production line one by one, waiting to be loaded onto trucks and shipped away.

The power grid is getting denser and denser, and the “roster” of occupations is becoming more and more new.Power aggregation operators are a profession that almost no one has heard of before - their daily job is to stare at the operating data of charging piles, air conditioning units, and energy storage stations on the screen, and accurately "call" every scattered adjustable load during peak power consumption.

During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, investment in new power grids will exceed 5 trillion yuan, driving the total upstream and downstream scale to exceed 10 trillion yuan.Infrastructure investment related to new power grids can directly create more than one million jobs.When a network is rolled out, the industrial chain develops on the spot, which also adds new momentum to economic growth.