The power grid and the communications network — one carrying energy, the other carrying information — are increasingly “sharing the same location”. In April 2026, a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee included the water network, new-type power grid, computing-power network, new-generation communications network, urban underground pipe network and logistics network in the coordinated construction layout of the “six networks”. According to estimates by the National Development and Reform Commission, investment in the “six networks” and related key areas is expected to exceed 7 trillion yuan in 2026.
There are already many concrete samples of the two networks working together. Tower sharing started earliest: in 2017, the “Dongguo No. 2 Circuit, Tower 6” in Kunming, Yunnan, pioneered nationwide “shared tower” trials. After China Southern Power Grid and China Tower reached a strategic cooperation in 2018, the sharing model spread across the five southern provinces, with more than 3,000 towers shared cumulatively, saving nearly 90,000 square meters of land and more than 300 million yuan in construction costs. On the energy side, by the end of 2025 China had 4.838 million 5G base stations, each equipped with storage batteries. Shenzhen has promoted the integration of base-station storage into virtual power plants: its virtual power plant resource pool has cumulatively regulated about 8.57 million kWh of electricity, cut carbon emissions by about 7,168 tons and created 230 million yuan of direct social economic benefits. The Guangzhou Tangxia multi-station integration demonstration project combines a substation, data center, PV station, storage station, charging stations and 5G base stations on one site, saving more than 7 million kWh of electricity per year, 30%–40% of land and 10%–20% of comprehensive costs.
For the distribution network, the impact of this convergence is concrete: with large amounts of distributed PV, storage and charging piles connected, the grid increasingly requires “observable, measurable, adjustable and controllable” endpoints, and self-built optical fiber can hardly cover the massive number of peripheral nodes, so services such as electricity information collection increasingly rely on public-network channels. China Southern Power Grid is building a “power supply + communications” mutual-protection coordination model in Guangzhou to provide dual-channel protection for distribution automation terminals, and is promoting the large-scale application of 5G and gigabit optical networks in power terminal perception and equipment condition monitoring.
Scaling up still faces real thresholds: the grid’s dispatch and control system has strict security isolation requirements, and moving into fiber sharing and data interconnection would touch security red lines; key technologies such as lightning protection for base stations and electromagnetic compatibility between high-voltage lines and communications equipment still need breakthroughs; and cross-network cost division, revenue distribution and planning-standard alignment have yet to take shape. Turning scattered practices into systematic coordination will require both institutional arrangements and technical breakthroughs. For distribution equipment manufacturers, new scenarios such as multi-station integration, dual channels for distribution automation and grid end-point perception mean that equipment must operate stably in stronger electromagnetic environments and with more business interfaces — a new benchmark for product design and testing.
Source:China Energy News Network