China's biggest electricity grid company, the State Grid Corp.
of China, yesterday announced that it plans to spend up to 20
billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) in the next five years to improve the
transmission network in rural areas.
President of State Grid, Liu Zhenya said yesterday, "The project
is in line with central government's new countryside scheme and will benefit
millions of farmers in poor areas, especially in the west, which
suffers from harsh environmental conditions."
State Grid, whose business covers about 88 percent of China's
territory, aims to invest around 1 trillion (US$123 billion) in
total on various projects to improve the country's electricity
networks by the year 2010, Liu said.
Beijing-headquartered, State Grid, is the bigger of China's two
electricity distributors. The other is Guangzhou-based, China South
Grid, which supplies electricity to?five provinces in the
south.
The investment could come from the company's own capital, bank
loans and state bonds, a company official, who declined to be
named, said earlier. He wouldn't elaborate.
According to the company, currently about 1.4 million
households, or 6 million people, in rural areas live without
electricity supplies.
Within the next five years they plan to build electricity
transmission lines linking the main power grid with about 1.2
million households concentrated in western areas such as the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province.
The remaining 200,000 households will be connected to separate
power generators driven by small hydro projects, wind farms or
solar power plants because it may be too difficult to construct
power supply lines in those areas.
Liu said the cost of improving the power network in villages
would be split 50-50 between State Grid and local governments.
For Tibet alone, Liu said, the company will have to invest about
8 billion yuan (US$986 million) to provide electricity to 160,000
remote households.
Liu also said his company planned to spend about 90 million yuan
(US$11 million) over the next five years training electricians in
rural areas so they could carry out maintenance work.?
(China Daily March 28, 2006)