On September 16, State Grid Corporation of China held a press conference in Beijing to release a package of measures for building a modernized power-use business environment and supporting high-quality economic and social development. The ten measures cover business connection, power supply reliability, green energy use and livelihood services. Content such as expanded low-voltage access capacity, publication of available distribution network capacity, county-level grid upgrading and charging facility construction is directly relevant to distribution network construction and the application of power distribution equipment.
For the connection process, State Grid will consolidate and upgrade its “zero trips, zero approval, zero investment” convenient connection service: for all types of private-economy organizations with an applied capacity of 160 kW or below, 380/220 V low-voltage supply will be provided across the board; in municipalities, provincial capitals and cities specifically designated in the state plan where conditions allow, the upper limit of low-voltage access capacity will be raised from 160 kW to 200 kW, reducing customers’ connection costs.
For key “new quality productive forces” enterprises in chip manufacturing, precision machining and biopharmaceuticals, State Grid will strengthen condition monitoring and the operation and maintenance of surrounding substations and lines, optimize grid structure and customer connection plans, and provide enterprise-specific guidance on properly configuring devices such as uninterruptible power supplies. For new energy integration, it will provide fair and efficient grid-connection services for new entities such as renewable energy, new-type energy storage and source-grid-load-storage projects, publish available capacity information for distribution networks in a standardized way, and ensure the timely integration of more than 60 million kW of distributed generation per year during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.
On livelihood services, the measures call for addressing electricity problems in communities not directly supplied by the grid, and for steadily advancing “one meter per household” conversion where conditions permit; the main network structures of weakly connected county grid areas will be upgraded during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, and the average annual outage time per rural household in 2030 will be cut by more than 30% compared with 2025. For green travel, State Grid will push for 100% of fixed parking spaces in new residential communities to have private charging facilities installed or installation conditions reserved, and support centralized construction and shared services for community public charging facilities. Other measures include deepening “power supply plus energy efficiency” services, promoting joint processing of water, electricity, gas and network services and cross-provincial handling of power supply business, and aligning power supply service grids with local government grassroots governance grids.
Beijing is a first practice site for these measures. In 2018, Beijing took the lead nationwide in introducing the low-voltage “zero trips, zero approval, zero investment” service, which was listed as a reform benchmark by the World Bank. After the measures were released, State Grid Beijing Electric Power, building on the consolidated “zero trips, zero approval, zero investment” and “three savings” services, launched eight measures for power-quality-sensitive customers in chip manufacturing, biopharmaceuticals, precision machining and computing facilities, and will continue to advance cross-provincial and cross-network services and government-enterprise grid coordination.
From an industry perspective, the higher low-voltage access limit, large-scale integration of distributed generation, county grid upgrading and supporting construction for charging facilities will continue to generate demand for new construction and upgrading of distribution networks, and place higher requirements on the reliability, intelligence and delivery capability of power distribution equipment.