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The Chinese Supergrid Challenges the World

From the series The world car battle

Electrification of Everything – Accelerating Electrification is the title of a document by Siemens AG. For the German electric group, electrification is the necessary step to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

The global grid

According to the International Energy Agency, electrification means replacing technologies or processes that use fossil fuels, like internal combustion engines and gas boilers, with electrically-powered equivalents, such as electric vehicles or heat pumps. These replacements are typically more efficient, reducing energy demand, and have a growing impact on emissions as electricity generation is decarbonised.

The grid is a single integrated mechanism of continental dimensions, owned by dozens of different companies and managed by operators who balance thousands of producers with different energy sources in real-time. A new electrical device can be designed and built in a year or two, or a new household appliance and an electrified car in a decade, but the electric grid requires decades to be planned and built [Peter Fox-Penner, Power After Carbon, 2020].

According to Rystad Energy, an independent energy research and business intelligence firm based in Oslo, global electric grids will require $3.1 trillion in investments by 2030. An additional eighteen million kilometres would be needed to keep up with worldwide electrification. This would increase the total length of electric grids to 104 million kilometres by 2030 and 140 million kilometres by 2050 – almost the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

The growing global demand for energy is the main factor driving the need to strengthen the grid. This increase is driven by population growth, industrialisation, and urbanisation in developing countries, as well as efforts in the energy transition, which essentially seeks to electrify any energy source. Today, this growth is being accelerated by the digitisation of the economy, the exponential growth in internet usage, the proliferation of data centres, and artificial intelligence, which is a major consumer of electricity.

Chinese supergrid

According to the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), China had the ambitious plan to build the largest supergrid in the world, with high voltage direct current (HVDC) lines around 500 kV (kilovolts) and ultra-high voltage (UHV), either direct current (UHVDC) or alternating current (UHVAC), above 800 kV [IEEE, February 21st, 2019]. We wrote about UHV networks in this newspaper in October 2022.

A supergrid is a wide-area transmission network designed to enable the exchange of large volumes of electricity over long distances. UHV lines transfer electricity generated from coal, gas, hydro, solar, or wind power plants from remote areas to metropolises thousands of kilometres away.

Energy authorities worldwide are watching what China is doing. Gregory Reed, a transmission expert who manages the Center for Energy at the University of Pittsburgh, argues that the UHV network places China far ahead of the rest of the world. Reed warns that the Chinese are investing significantly and have gone straight to the highest levels of technological capacity from day one. There is no comparison with anywhere else in the world: It's like we’re all still pedalling our bicycles, while the Formula One race car goes flying by.

As described by Chinese politics expert Yi-Chong Xu in her 2017 book Sinews of Power [Oxford University Press], the decision to develop an ultra-high voltage network was made at the end of 2004 by Liu Zhenya, then president of State Grid, the largest electric utility in the world, and by Ma Kai, minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the powerful State agency that regulates growth and major Chinese investments. Within a year, the NDRC had approved an ambitious plan to build ultra high voltage networks.

Electricity, by its nature, has been a science-based industry since its origins. Liu assigned about 2,000 engineers from State Grid to the project and funded more than 300 professors and 1,000 graduate students at Chinese universities to conduct research and development activities related to the power grid. It is another example of how Chinese capitalism is no longer based solely on a large availability of low-wage labour, as it was before 2000, but focuses on high technologies and a science-based industry.

In January 2009, State Grid activated its first UHV (alternating current) demonstration line at 1,000 kV and 650 km in length, to connect the regional grids of northern and central China. Ten years later, State Grid had completed 19 of the 30 proposed UHV lines.

ABB, whose electrical division is now part of Hitachi, Siemens, and other international energy technology companies, played a decisive role in the development and validation of key components of the Chinese UHV network. As was the case for Volkswagen when it opened its first joint factory in China, State Grid insisted on sharing intellectual property for the technologies developed on its behalf. Initially, suppliers hesitated – Liu wrote – but ultimately yielded due to the determined attitude of the Chinese utility and market opportunities. State Grid is also exporting its equipment and expertise abroad.

Liu, now the former president of the company, is leading a campaign to build transcontinental and intercontinental UHV networks. The same technology used to build the 1,100 kV line from Xinjiang to Anhui could efficiently transport energy up to 5,000 kilometres. On this basis, he is conceiving ambitious plans to bring electricity from northern China to Europe. If we just turn that line around to point west, we are getting close to Europe. So, the technology is available, says Magnus Callavik, general manager of ABB Sifang Power System, a joint venture between the Swiss energy engineering giant ABB and the Chinese Sifang Automation, based in Beijing. The obstacles would be political, no longer technological.

The American weakness

China adds flexibility to power grids, builds storage capacity to avoid outages [Reuters, July 26th, 2023]. According to central government officials, Beijing is introducing more flexible solutions for the transmission of electric power in its national grid system, helping to prevent the recurrence of outages that affected some parts of the country last year. Ultra-high voltage grids allow for more stability: if hydroelectric power from dams in the Central-West is lacking, wind and solar power from Mongolia can be used.

This year, China has also widely developed its energy storage capacities with a new kind of technologies, officials said. The storage of this energy is largely done with lithium-ion batteries and contrasts with the old pumped hydro-storage technologies. The battery that powers electric cars or laptops is used for grid stabilisation. To understand how strategic the lithium battery is, one must look beyond the automotive sector and consider all industrial sectors.

The January 21st issue of Forbes states: China Is Building a Supergrid – And So Should We. In 2021, a severe snowstorm hit Texas. When it happened, the State’s isolated grid, lacking the advantages of a supergrid to access excess energy from neighbouring regions, left 4.5 million homes and businesses without electricity [Lotta Comunista, March 2021].

To understand why, one must remember that the United States’ electric grid includes three main interconnections: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the independent Texas Interconnection. The local grids within these zones are connected, but the links between the three large zones are minimal, reducing efficient energy use and leaving the grids vulnerable to outages. Forbes notes that China is moving quickly to build the world's largest supergrid, and the US must learn to do the same within the American electric system.

Interesting marginal note: these UHV lines predominantly exploit new technology made in Europe. The European Union does not intend to fall behind. The president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stated at the World Economic Forum that a European supergrid will be at the centre of an upcoming plan to lower electricity prices [Euractiv, January 21st].

American industrial capitalism, after the Second World War, taught Europe and the rest of the world Fordism, Taylorism, scientifically-based management, and the creation of large electrical grids. The US is still on the offensive with the digital giants. Today, however, the supergrid is a factor of the productivity struggle, and China and the EU are ahead of the US. One indicator is the size of electric utilities: none of the top ten worldwide are American. In the coming decades, in the competition among great powers, a fundamental battle, although little visible in the media, will be fought over electric grids.

Lotta Comunista, September 2025

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