The leading website on investment projects in China quoted sources with the State Development Planning Commission (SDPC) as saying that the central government is taking effective measures to connect the existing cross-province power grids and independent power generators.

By 2010, three large regional power grid centers will be built in northern, southern and central China.

The central power grid center, with the Three Gorges power grid at the core, will embrace the existing Central China Power Grid, East China Power Grid, and Chuanyu (Sichuan Province-Chongqing Municipality) Power Grid.

The northern center involves the current North China Power Grid, Northeast China Power Grid, and Northwest China Power Grid, while the southern center will cover Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangdong provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The regional power grid centers will be partially hooked up within 10 years, to create a framework for the unified national power grid network.

Before 2020, China will complete a series of big hydropower stations along the Honghe and Lancang rivers, and at the upper reaches of the Yellow and the Yangtze, China's two largest waterways.

Meanwhile, many long-distance transmission lines with a large power delivery capacity, a key link in the construction of the nationwide power grid network, will be built.

Completion of the network will facilitate transmission of thermal power from the north to the south and of hydropower from the west to the east, the SDPC sources said.

In addition, the northern power grid center is expected to be linked up with the Russian power grid network by 2020, while the southern power grid center is likely to connect with the Thai power grid network.

The SDPC sources said that the on-going project to transport electricity from the west to the east will contribute to the construction of the nationwide power grid network.

China has made remarkable progress in transmitting electricity from the resources-rich west to the economically-developed east. More thermal power plants are to be built in western Inner Mongolia, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and western Henan Province to shore up the west-to-east power transmission program, according to Sinoprojects.com.

(Xinhua 11/24/2000)