The 13th Five-Year Plan for rural power grid transformation and upgrading: focusing on shortcomings and making concerted efforts

Whether it is the "cliff village" where you need to climb nearly a thousand meters to go out, or the rarely visited outposts on the snowy plateau, they are all connected to the main power grid; the long-isolated Dulongjiang Township has built a microgrid, and the interconnection project with the main power grid is also being stepped up; the three major tasks of electrifying wells, transforming the power grid in central villages and small towns, and connecting power to poor villages have been successfully completed, and the overall rural power construction has reached a new level. The new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading projects implemented in 2016 have achieved significant results.

The new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading projects has more detailed goals, more specific measures and more obvious results. As of 2018, the total investment in the three-year rural power grid transformation and upgrading was about 660 billion yuan, of which 29.5 billion yuan was from the central budget, and about 630 billion yuan was invested in corporate own funds, bank loans, and local fiscal funds. It focused on poverty alleviation, helped rural revitalization, promoted border defense and consolidation, and military-civilian integration. The electricity consumption in rural and remote areas increased rapidly, forming a strong new domestic power supply and consumption market.

Focus on poverty alleviation and tackle the "hard bones" that have been difficult to chew for many years

Atulier Village in Zhaojue County, Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province, has become a nationally famous "cliff village" because it requires climbing a nearly 1,000-meter cliff to travel. In the new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading, power grid employees set up cableways, cut through thorns, and worked on the cliffs. They built 1 kilometer of new 10 kV lines, 18 new 10 kV distribution transformers, 22.3 kilometers of new 0.4 kV and below low-voltage lines, and 406 new household meters, which completely solved the electricity problem of the "cliff village" and the adjacent Shuzu Village and Kangfu Village, a total of three cliff villages.

Poverty alleviation is one of the "three major battles" clearly defined by the Party Central Committee, and the transformation and upgrading of rural power grids undertakes an important task. The new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading projects focuses on poverty alleviation, accelerates the transformation and upgrading of rural power grids in western and impoverished areas, and focuses on promoting the transformation and upgrading of rural power grids in key counties for national poverty alleviation and development, concentrated and contiguous impoverished areas, and old revolutionary areas, to solve problems such as substandard voltage, unreasonable structure, and lack of power supply, and improve the level of universal power service.

In order to implement the new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading projects, in May 2016, the National Energy Administration simultaneously issued six documents, including "Notice of the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration on Issuing the 2016-2017 Implementation Plan for the Rural Power Grid Transformation and Upgrading Project in Small Towns and Central Villages", "Notice of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Energy Administration on Issuing the 2016-2017 Implementation Plan for the Rural Well Electrification Project", and "Notice of the National Energy Administration on Issuing the Technical Principles for a New Round of Rural Power Grid Transformation and Upgrading", etc., as supporting documents for the "Notice of the General Office of the State Council on Forwarding the Opinions of the National Development and Reform Commission on Implementing a New Round of Rural Power Grid Transformation and Upgrading Projects during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period" (Guobanfa [2016] No. 9), to promote the smooth implementation of the project.

In the first three years of the 13th Five-Year Plan, State Grid Corporation of China completed a new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading with an investment of 485.4 billion yuan, with an overall progress of 80%. It built and renovated 58,000 kilometers of 110 kV and 35 kV lines with a transformer capacity of 170 million kVA; 1.6 million kilometers of 10 kV and below lines with a distribution transformer capacity of 190 million kVA. The power supply capacity, service quality, and safety and reliability of rural power grids have been significantly improved, providing strong support for rural economic and social development and poverty alleviation.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China Southern Power Grid Corporation plans to invest 131.2 billion yuan in a new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading, of which no less than 65.3 billion yuan will be invested in poverty-stricken areas. From 2016 to 2018, the company has completed a total investment of 106.8 billion yuan in a new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading, accounting for about 81.4% of the 13th Five-Year Plan, of which 55.3 billion yuan has been invested in rural power grids in poverty-stricken areas.

In December 2016, the National Energy Administration and the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development issued the Implementation Plan for Power Supply to Poor Villages, organizing the implementation of the power supply project to poor villages. Power supply to poor villages has become one of the "three major tasks" at the beginning of a new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading. All central and local power grid companies have responded positively, fulfilled their duties and made efforts. As of December 2017, the power supply project to poor villages has been basically completed. Except for Tibet, power supply to poor natural villages has been achieved. A total of 33,082 natural villages have been connected to power supply, involving 839 counties in 23 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), involving about 8 million rural residents.

The "three regions and three prefectures" (Tibet, the Tibetan areas of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces, the four prefectures in southern Xinjiang; Liangshan Prefecture of Sichuan Province, Nujiang Prefecture of Yunnan Province, and Linxia Prefecture of Gansu Province) are deep poverty areas identified by the state, and are also the most difficult "hard bones" to chew in the new round of rural power grid transformation and upgrading. In 2018, the National Energy Administration launched and issued a three-year action plan for the transformation and upgrading of rural power grids in the "three regions and three prefectures", increasing the proportion of central capital in the "three prefectures" from 20% to 50%, and increasing the proportion of central funds arranged for the "three regions and three prefectures" from 50.9% in 2018 to 64.9% in 2019.

From 2016 to 2017, the State Grid Corporation of China completed the power supply coverage project for 1,538 poor villages and 8,209 natural villages in the provinces where the "three regions and two prefectures" are located. In 2018, the State Grid Corporation of China fully launched the transformation and upgrading of the power grid in the "three regions and two prefectures", and completed an investment of 8.1 billion yuan that year to extend the coverage of the large power grid, focusing on the implementation of the interconnection of isolated grid counties in Tibet and the power supply project for 296 administrative villages, focusing on solving the problems of transformer substation series supply and line bottlenecks, and significantly improving the production and living power conditions of 1,200 villages, 250,000 households, and 920,000 people.

The State Grid Corporation of China has also continued to increase its power grid construction efforts in 381 national-level impoverished counties outside of deep-poverty areas. The "two rates and one household" indicators have been steadily improved. By the end of 2018, the rural power grid reliability rate in nearly 300 counties, the comprehensive voltage qualification rate in 150 counties, and the average household distribution and transformation capacity in 200 counties were close to the provincial average, laying a solid foundation for fully achieving the target requirements in 2019.

China Southern Power Grid also attaches great importance to the transformation and upgrading of rural power grids in poverty-stricken areas such as the "Three Regions and Three Prefectures", focusing on solving the existing problems of "stuck neck" and low voltage in rural power grids, meeting the electricity needs of about 1.36 million relocated people and helping 9.17 million poor people get rid of poverty. At present, the reliability rate of rural power grid power supply in poverty-stricken areas in the company's supply area has reached 99.73%, the comprehensive voltage qualification rate has reached 98.34%, and the average distribution and transformation capacity per rural household has reached 1.9 kilovolt-amperes, which are close to the average level of rural areas in the entire network.

Helping rural revitalization and forming a powerful new electricity supply and consumption market

The wells in the Baimapo High-yield and High-efficiency Agricultural Demonstration Zone in Hua County, Anyang City, Henan Province have been electrified for two years, and all of them have realized the new model of electrified irrigation for wells, that is, one well is equipped with one underground line, one underground line is connected to an electric energy meter, and one electric energy meter can be equipped with multiple contact induction magnetic cards as needed. Farmers have one electricity purchase card per family, and they can irrigate the land by swiping the card.