Preparations have begun for building the world's first 800-kilovolt direct-current power transmission line to send electricity from resource-rich Yunnan Province in southwest China to China's major economic powerhouse of Guangdong.

 

According to Yuan Maozhen, chairman of the China Southern Power Grid Corp. (CSG), China's second largest electricity distributor, the 800-kilivolt direct-current electricity transmission line will be completed before 2010.

 

"So far, key technologies of the project are ready, and assessment of environmental and land issues has been underway," said Yuan.

 

With 60 percent of equipment made in China, the new transmission line will have a larger capacity and be more stable than the current 500-kilovolt direct-current lines, said experts at CSG's annual work conference held in Nanning, capital of southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

 

The power transmission line is one of the four lines for CSG's west-to-east electricity transmission program, which will be built in the next five years to ease the power bottleneck in Guangdong Province by tapping water resources in southwest China.

 

China's southern power grid suffered a maximum power shortfall of 9.4 million kilowatts in 2005, due to the economic boom in the region. CSG estimated that the shortfall in the first half of this year will fall to 5.4 million kilowatts in five provinces and regions in south China, according to statistics from the conference.

 

Yuan Maozhen said that to ease the shortfall, CSG planned to invest some 234 billion yuan (US$28.9 billion) in power grid construction in the next five years.

 

CSG targeted to complete the installed power generating capacity of 164 million kilowatts by 2010, said Yuan.

 

(Xinhua News Agency January 23, 2006)