Awesome Companies & Great Careers: State Grid

February 10, 2021 herculesking Awesome Companies & Great Careers 23

The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), commonly known as the State Grid, is a Chinese state-owned electric utility corporation.^[2] It is the largest utility company in the world, and as of 2020, the world’s third largest company overall by revenue.^[3] In 2016/17 it was reported as having 927,839 employees, 1.1 billion customers and revenue equivalent to US$363.125 billion.^[2]^[4]

After the electricity “Plant-Grid Separation” reform in early 2002, the assets of State Electric Power Corporation (国家电力公司) were divided into the five “power generation groups” that retained the power plants and five regional subsidiaries belonging to the State Grid Corporation of China in Beijing.^[4]

China began an initiative to reform the country’s power sector in a three-stage process in 1986.^[5] In the third and final stage in March 2002 the State Council of the People’s Republic of China put into effect a plan to restructure the country’s electric power system in order to create competition and separate generation and transmission functions.^[6] The State Grid Corporation of China was founded on December 29, 2002, when the restructuring divided the former State Power Corporation of China into two grid companies, five generation groups and four accessorial business companies.^[7] The two grid companies created were the State Grid Corporation of China and a smaller China Southern Power Grid Company.^[8] At its creation, the company had a generation capacity of 6.47 gigawatts.^[6]

In 2003 and progressively so through the early 2000s, electrical shortages caused the government to institute rolling blackouts. The State Grid Corporation estimated there were 1 trillion yuan in losses from 2002 to 2005.^[6] The State Grid Corporation of China ran the first 1,000-kilovolt alternating current power line between Northern Shanxi and center Hubei in January 2009. In 2012 it began operation of an 800-kilovolt direct current line that sends hydropower from western Sichuan to Shanghai. It also has an alternating current loop line in the Yangtze River delta, and three longitudinal alternating current lines that bring power to Southern China from the Northern region.^[9]

The State Grid Corporation was involved in a multi-phase smart-grid project for China‘s electrical grid planned for 2011–2015.^[10] China’s smart grid efforts are different from those in the United States in that its plans heavily use ultra high voltage (UHV) lines. Several UHV construction projects began in 2012 to bring UHV power lines across Huainan, Wannan, and Shanghai and another from Xilingol League to Nanjing. By 2015, the company planned to have three more horizontal UHV lines through West Inner Mongolia to Weifang, from Central Shanxi–Xuzhou to Yaan–southern Anhui and 11 other lines by 2015.^[9]