In China’s bid to become a world leader in clean energy, it is finding that its power grid can’t handle the new technologies. The New York Times reports:
State Grid Corp. of China, the country’s top electricity distributor, hopes to get around this impasse by building what it calls a “strong, smart grid.” After two years of testing its grid plan, the company is now throttling up to full-speed implementation.
The hope is to rescue renewable energy, especially wind power, from a technical bottleneck. Additionally, a smarter power grid would create demand that could give China a better position in the lucrative and highly competitive global smart grid component manufacturing race. Finally, it would also help reduce the nation’s transportation emissions by developing a nationwide electric vehicle charging network.s
Since Chinese leaders have yet to regulate this nascent sector, it is State Grid that will make the decisions for national grid development. The result of its ongoing grid plan will not only affect its more than 1 billion customers in China, but also be felt by the outside world.
The overarching goal for the more advanced transmission network, according to the company, is to reduce enough carbon emissions to help China achieve at least 20 percent of its targeted emission cuts.
