HANGZHOU, China, June 24, 2024 — As China endures a scorching summer and a surge in electricity demand, many cities face the challenge of ensuring a steady power supply. Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, a major economic hub in eastern China, takes this challenge seriously, prioritizing stable electricity supply.
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Hangzhou has taken the lead in Zhejiang Province by implementing a 0.4 kilovolt low-voltage power supply reliability extension management system. This initiative aims to optimize the construction of a new distribution network incorporating photovoltaics, energy storage, charging stations, and other flexible facilities.
Covering over 16,000 square kilometers, Hangzhou boasts a population of over 12 million and more than 1.8 million market entities. In 2023, the city’s electricity consumption reached 98.7 billion kWh, and its GDP surpassed 2 trillion yuan.
Despite natural challenges like high urban load density, frequent rainstorms and flooding, and a significant proportion of mountainous areas, Hangzhou has built a world-class urban power distribution network, ensuring high power reliability.
The average annual power outage time per household in the core urban area is less than 30 seconds, and for the entire city, it’s less than 10 minutes. Hangzhou’s power supply reliability rate of 99.9982% rivals that of international metropolises like New York, Vancouver, Tokyo, and Paris.
In 2023, Hangzhou hosted the 19th Asian Games, showcasing its smart, futuristic, vibrant, and dynamic character. This success reinforces Hangzhou as a popular host city for major sporting events. The city’s high electricity supply reliability proved crucial in ensuring a smooth event, particularly for badminton competitions, where the reliable operation of electrical equipment like “Hawk-Eye,” timing and scoring systems, and court lighting is essential.
As a hub for Chinese tech giants like Alibaba, Hangzhou experiences a growing concentration of high-tech enterprises. The science and technology innovation corridor in west Hangzhou, home to numerous scientific facilities, laboratories, and innovation platforms, demands exceptionally high power supply reliability.
Reprogenix, a high-tech company engaged in cellular medical research, is located in this corridor. Their workshops require incubators that simulate the human body environment for cell growth.
“A cultivation cycle takes three months, and there can be no power interruptions during the process,” said Zhuang Dewei, a company representative.
Hangzhou, a demonstration area for a world-class power distribution network, has achieved an impressive 99.9999% power supply reliability in the core areas of the Asian Games and the science and technology innovation corridor. For residents in these areas, power outages are a distant memory.
This remarkable improvement in power supply reliability is attributed to a series of comprehensive, precise, and data-driven management initiatives implemented by the State Grid Hangzhou Power Supply Company, guided by the principle of “providing uninterrupted electricity as the ultimate service.”
The company has increased its investment in power grids in high-demand urban areas and mountainous regions. It has also enhanced manpower, equipment, and technical support for uninterrupted power operations.
Innovative technologies such as drone automatic inspection, equipment online monitoring, grid-based intelligent inspection, and live-line robot autonomous maintenance are being employed to detect and address faults promptly.
“In the past, weather-related disruptions in remote mountainous areas would take at least an hour to address. Now, with intelligent remote switches, faults in power lines are located within seconds, and isolation, self-healing, and power restoration can be completed in as little as 5 minutes,” said Yang Xuan, deputy director of the digitalization distribution network management department of the State Grid Hangzhou Power Supply Company.
Hangzhou has been a pioneer in China in reforming and innovating to boost power supply reliability. In 2001, alongside Beijing and Shanghai, it became one of the first pilot cities for developing distribution network automation systems. By 2018, the system made significant progress, enabling millisecond-level seamless fault handling.
In 2020, Hangzhou took the lead in China by canceling planned power outages of 10 (20) kilovolts in its core urban areas. This policy was expanded to county-level urban areas in 2021 and to the entire city in 2022, making Hangzhou a city without planned power outages.
Hangzhou is building a comprehensive demonstration zone for a modern intelligent power distribution network. With the support of various digital platforms and smart AI technologies, the city will continuously transmit diverse types of electric energy, including wind, solar, and hydro power, from across the country to enterprises, venues, and households. This initiative will empower Hangzhou to achieve its goal of becoming a world-class socialist, modern, and international metropolis by 2035.
Source: State Grid Hangzhou Power Supply Company
CONTACT: Contact person: Ms. Li Tel: 86-10-63074558
