Electricity is a product of the second industrial revolution, and technological progress requires little by little accumulation. Throughout the 20th century, countries that were leaders in these technological fields, such as the United States, Japan, France, and Germany, were the pioneers of the second industrial revolution. Before China, no country had been able to catch up in the power sector. Due to the late start of China's industry, until the early stage of reform and opening up, most of China's power generation equipment and power grid technology still relied on the foundation of the Soviet Union's aid during the "First Five-Year Plan" period. After the Sino-Soviet diplomatic relations, due to the blockade of science and technology by the outside world, China's technological level in the field of electric power lagged behind the West for two or three decades. Backward power technology has become the biggest obstacle to China's energy improvement after the reform and opening up. In order to narrow the technological gap with the West, and to meet China's soaring energy needs, in the next 30 years, China's power engineers will face an unprecedented technological catch-up in this field in the face of Western developed countries. They will tell a moving story of unity and progress, singing and crying.
In 1975, a 300,000 kilowatt generator set independently developed by China's "Dagan Kuaishang" was installed at the Yaomeng Power Plant in Henan Province. At that time, 20 years had passed since the world's first 300,000 kW unit was developed. However, ignoring the objective laws, the reliability of the equipment forcibly developed is extremely low, and coal and water leakage, boiler pipe bursts, and blade fractures occur at every turn, and the design ability is completely inexerted. By the time of the reform and opening up, China still used units below 100,000 kilowatts at most, while Germany and France at that time were already able to manufacture equipment of 900,000 kilowatts or even 1.3 million kilowatts, and the technology was 4-5 generations ahead of China.
In order to meet the demand for electricity as soon as possible and get rid of the embarrassing situation of "small horses and big carts", domestic power plants began to introduce advanced power generation equipment from the West in batches. For example, in 1978 and 1985, the Yuanbaoshan Power Plant in Inner Mongolia imported 300,000 kW and 600,000 kW units from France and Switzerland to supply power to the northeast industrial town, which was the first in China. However, despite spending a lot of foreign exchange to import foreign units, China still cannot master the manufacturing technology behind it. In the long run, valuable foreign exchange will be depleted and unsustainable. In this regard, the state decided to completely localize the power generation equipment, and do something that no one has ever done before.
At the end of 1978, the then First Ministry of Machinery Industry organized two groups of inspection missions at the same time, one led by Minister Zhou Zijian to inspect 6 European countries including Germany and France, including 11 power generation equipment factories and 5 high-voltage switchgear plants, and the other led by Vice Minister Zhou Jiannan to inspect Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Hitachi and other companies in Japan. After the inspection, the First Ministry of Machinery Industry, together with the Ministry of Water and Power, proposed to the State Development Planning Commission: At the same time, the technical scheme of 300,000 kilowatts and 600,000 kilowatts of thermal power units will be introduced to boldly achieve "corner overtaking".
In 1980, the two departments finally chose to introduce the power generation equipment manufacturing technology of Westinghouse and Combustion Engineering of the United States, and the power plant design introduced the technology of Ibasco Engineering Company of the United States. In 1985, the relevant technology of Hitachi was introduced. As for why foreign companies are so confident and bold in passing on their technology to the Chinese side, on the one hand, it is because although these technologies are advanced, they are not yet top-notch. On the other hand, no country has yet been able to achieve such a big leap forward. Historically, Malaysia, Turkey and other countries have learned from the West, but at best they have learned a little skin, and in the end key components still have to be imported from the West, but the Chinese do not believe in this evil.
By the 90s, China already had the capacity to produce 10 million kilowatts to 15 million kilowatts of power generation equipment per year, and the number of imported equipment began to decrease. It was also at that time that efficient and reliable domestic power generation equipment was stationed in major power plants across the country, and the phenomenon of electricity shortage gradually disappeared. In 1995, China's installed power generation capacity reached 200 million kilowatts. Since then, China's installed power generation capacity has soared, from 200 million to 300 million kilowatts, in five years; from 300 million to 400 million kilowatts, in 3 years; From 400 million to 500 million kilowatts, it took 2 years.
Since 2006, China's installed power generation capacity has grown by an average of 100 million kilowatts per year. At the same time, China has developed a domestic 1 million kilowatt generator set, and its technology ranks among the world's first echelon. The power generation equipment manufactured by China's three major electric companies can even be exported to Eastern Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia, grabbing market share from their Western teachers. In 2010, China broke the 110-year-old record held by the United States as the world's largest power producer. These large generator sets owned today are the heart of China's industry today.
Compared with world-class power generation technology, China's transmission technology is even better. From the day it was born, it was destined to be the number one in the world. Due to China's vast territory, thermal power in North China, hydropower in the west, wind power and photovoltaic power in the northwest are thousands of kilometers away from the southeast coastal industrial zone. As a result, no other country has such a high desire for a high-voltage, high-power, long-distance power transmission network as China.
However, like power generation technology, China's power grid technology is also "congenitally insufficient". Due to the late start, before the reform and opening up, China's mainstream 220 kV transmission network was 31 years behind the world's first line of the same level, and even the more advanced 330 kV lines in China at that time were 20 years behind Western countries. After the reform and opening up, the launch of new heavy industry projects made China's demand for high-grade transmission lines urgent. For example, in 1979, in order to solve the Wuhan Iron and Steel Plant 1The power supply stability of the new 7-meter turnstile caused the construction of China's first 500 kV transmission line between Pingdingshan and Wuchang in Henan Province. However, at that time, China did not have the ability to build its own high-voltage lines, and the substation equipment, relay protection and communication equipment on this line were imported from seven companies in six countries, including Japan and France.
In 1984, China tried to build a 500 kV transmission line for the first time, and as a result, domestic equipment problems continued, such as cable oil leakage, transformer oil leakage, and circuit breakers. But these setbacks have not stopped China from pursuing the localization of its power grid. In 1985, China introduced a full set of power grid technology from the Swiss company ABB to build a 500 kV direct current transmission project from Gezhouba to Shanghai. At that time, in order to meet the requirements of foreign supporting introduction, even the turf of the Shanghai power station was imported. On the basis of ABB's technology, China Electric Power has started the road of localization. Ten years later, the localization rate of this technology exceeded 50%, and 20 years later, the localization rate reached 100%.
In 2005, the Northwest-Central China Lingbao Transmission Project constructed by the State Grid realized the complete independent design, manufacturing, and construction management of the 500 kV power grid for the first time. Next, China's power engineers began to climb to a higher goal – ultra-high voltage. At the beginning of the 21st century, when China proposed the development of UHV, the power grid had 7 inter-provincial regions, with the Northeast, Central China, East China, Northwest, South, and Southwest as the management units, and the major regions were not connected to each other. However, with the increasing demand for electricity in the eastern provinces, the plan to connect the western and eastern regions through high-voltage power grids has been put on the agenda.
More importantly, this grid is a "poverty alleviation network". From 2001 Northeast - North China Power Grid Connection, to 2010 Xinjiang - Northwest Transmission Line was completed, in 10 years, the country through the construction of regional power grid ultra-high voltage, UHV lines, basically realized a game of chess in the country.
And when China's UHV projects were launched, Western countries stopped exploring. At that time, the Western industry generally believed that UHV projects were not suitable for the Western power market with its large footprint and low investment efficiency. As a result, China was given the opportunity to catch up, and through the technological advantages accumulated in the UHV project, China became the sixth permanent member of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) after the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan. China's UHV standard was subsequently recommended as an international standard, and related equipment was also exported to Brazil, India and other countries that also need long-distance power transmission.
But for China, in addition to exports occupying the international power market, UHV is also the key to the next energy revolution. This revolution, called "new energy", will completely change China's position and pattern in the global energy market.
The first flashpoint of the new energy revolution appeared on the beautiful and barren Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. After the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway in 2006, the economy developed rapidly and the electricity gap expanded. How to solve the problem of electricity difficulty is placed in front of the leaders. At that time, the electricity was mainly hydropower, but hydropower fluctuated greatly, and there was a serious shortage of electricity during the dry period, which required external power input. To this end, a group of experts led by the deputy director suggested that a high-voltage transmission line should be pulled from Qinghai to Lhasa to connect the originally closed power grid with the whole country. But the proposal has been opposed by some experts, who argue that building a power grid on the Tibetan Plateau would be more labor-intensive than building a local oil-fired power plant. But in the end, for long-term considerations, ** and the State Grid still decided to build a high-voltage power grid in **.
In 2011, the state built the Qinghai-** transmission line. In 2015 and 2018, the state built Sichuan-Tibet and Sichuan-Central transmission lines. At the beginning, the country's investment in the power grid was generally regarded as a poverty alleviation move, but with the advent of the new energy era, the huge potential for new energy development has gradually been known to the world. At present, more than half of the country's undeveloped water resources are concentrated in the Yarlung Zangbo River, Jinsha River, Nu River and other rivers. At the same time, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the sunniest region in the world, and the photovoltaic power generation efficiency is 1 of that of the Northwest Gobi5 times and twice as much as the southeast coast.
With the vigorous construction of new energy projects, in 2015, it began to transmit electricity to the outside world, completing the role transformation from input to output, from "poverty alleviation" to "feeding". In the long run, with China's commitment to "peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060", coal, which used to dominate energy in the past, is bound to gradually retire from the stage of history. The **, which has great potential, will bring China's most advanced new energy power generation and UHV technology to the forefront.
From a more macro point of view, like the construction of the first power grid, China has a lot of far-sighted layout in the field of power. In 2004, for example, Germany was the first country in the world to introduce subsidies for new energy sources. Stimulated by the subsidy policy, the proportion of the German photovoltaic industry once accounted for 40% of the world in 2010. After seeing the success of Germany's new energy policy, China soon implemented the "Renewable Energy Law" in 2006 and launched a new energy subsidy policy suitable for national conditions.
This time, hard-working Chinese engineers beat their competitors from developed countries in one fell swoop. Chinese PV companies dominate half of the overseas market, and wind power companies also account for 1 3 of the global share. Over the past 30 years, China has lagged behind, learned, and caught up in the energy sector until it caught pace with the advanced countries. In the next 30 years, China is bound to be at the forefront of the global new energy revolution. (To be continued) follow me, welcome to leave a message to discuss.