The National Energy Administration recently released the mainland's power industry statistics from January to April, as of the end of April, the country's cumulative installed power generation capacity has reached 3.01 billion kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 14.1%.
3 billion kilowatts, what is the concept?
The Three Gorges Hydropower Station is the world's largest power station with an installed capacity of 22.5 million kilowatts.
To put it simply, the current installed power generation capacity of the mainland is equivalent to 134 Three Gorges dams, which is terrifying.
To be more specific, the United States, as the global economic hegemon, has "only" 1.2-1.3 billion kilowatts of installed power generation, which is less than half of ours.
Even if all the developed countries in the world are taken together, they are far less than the installed power generation capacity of the mainland alone.
How did China achieve the world's largest installed power generation capacity? How difficult is it to meet the electricity needs of 1.4 billion people?
Today we will talk about these problems, it is not easy to code words, welcome to like, forward, and collect.
How difficult is it to solve the electricity problem of 1.4 billion people?
On a foreign platform before, an Indian netizen asked such a question:
"Does China have 24-hour power all year round?"
As a result, many foreign netizens replied positively, and an old brother who has worked in China for 5 years said that even during the typhoon, the power was only cut off for 5 minutes.
Although we now think that power outages are a rare thing, so that if the power is cut off at home, the first thing we will consider is whether we have forgotten to pay the electricity bill and what is wrong with our home, rather than worrying about the failure of the power supply system.
But back to twenty or thirty years ago, power outages were not uncommon in the mainland, and even the post-90s generation had a sudden power outage after late self-study, and everyone had precious memories of "fighting at night".
In the final analysis, the rapid progress of China's power industry is far from being as easy as we imagined, and it is only in recent years that great progress has been made.
How difficult is it to meet the electricity needs of 1.4 billion people?
Two difficulties, large electricity consumption, difficult power transmission.
It is not difficult to understand the large amount of electricity consumed, even if it is a small consumption, it is an astronomical figure after multiplying it by 1.4 billion.
In particular, as the world's factory, the mainland's annual industrial electricity consumption is terrifying, which poses a huge challenge to our power generation capacity.
According to official data, the mainland's electricity consumption in 2023 will be 9,224.1 billion kilowatt hours, compared with 4.1 trillion kilowatt hours in the United States, 1.3 trillion kilowatt hours in India, and less than 1 trillion kilowatt hours in Japan.
It is difficult to solve the problem of electricity consumption for 1.4 billion people.
Then the second difficulty is the difficulty of power transmission.
The resources on the mainland are unevenly distributed, and most of the resources that can be used to generate electricity are distributed in the northwest, but in terms of economy and population, the central and eastern parts are more dense.
Therefore, if we want 1.4 billion Chinese people to have access to electricity, we need to be able to complete large-scale, ultra-long-distance power transmission, that is, "west-to-east power transmission" and "north-south power transmission".
But the key problem is that power transmission of this scale and distance is a world-class problem.
Of course, it is precisely because of the extreme difficulty of overcoming these problems that China's power industry has developed rapidly in recent years, and finally built the world's largest. The most stable power grid.
Where are the cattle in China's power industry?
In addition to the world's largest installed power generation capacity, surpassing the sum of developed countries, the mainland's power industry is undoubtedly most praised for ultra-high voltage transmission technology.
As we mentioned earlier, in order for 1.4 billion Chinese to have access to electricity, it is necessary to transmit electricity from the energy-rich western and northern regions to the eastern and central regions.
For thousands of kilometers of transportation, power loss is undoubtedly a big problem, how can we use the least loss to transmit the most electricity?
Here we need to recall the formula for calculating the power of electricity in the first middle school - power is equal to the product of voltage and current.
Therefore, if we want to increase the electric power, we must increase the voltage or current, and if the current is too high, it will cause the wire to heat up and increase the loss, so increasing the voltage has become a must.
Therefore, in the absence of relevant experience in the world, the mainland itself started from 0, and finally overcame various problems and built a "power highway" - ultra-high voltage transmission.
Since 2009, the first ±800 kV Yunnan-Guangdong UHV project was put into operation, and the mainland's UHV line has officially ushered in the construction climax.
Nowadays, the mainland's power transmission network has been basically completed, and it has taken the lead in establishing a complete technical standard system, and it is no exaggeration to say that China's standards have become the world standard for UHV transmission technology alone.
The road is blue, and the power miracle is wonderful
In recent days, northern India has experienced high temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius, but at a critical moment, the power supply has begun to drop the chain:
Although the penetration rate of air conditioning in India is not high, it still puts a lot of pressure on the power supply, and there are often widespread power outages at night.
In this regard, the explanation given by the Indian grid operator is:
This is mainly due to solar power generation, which stops working at night.
Yes, this wave of explanations is very third-brother.
Now let's compare the domestic situation, do we have a deeper recognition of the mainland power industry?
In fact, in just a few decades, China's power generation has topped the world, behind which is the perseverance and dedication of countless power workers.
For example, in December 2015, in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province, with an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters, the erection of the line was successfully completed.
And this means that the last 39,800 people without electricity in the mainland have also achieved electricity to households.
Nowadays, many people may think that 24-hour power outage is the most basic life requirement, and who will have power outages all day long, which is not a big deal.
But when you think about it, isn't that really a big deal?
1.4 billion people have no power supply for 24 hours, even if it is put into the world, this is the biggest power miracle.
Write at the end:
China's power industry is booming, and the problem of electricity consumption for 1.4 billion people has been solved, which is the result of the selfless dedication of thousands of people in the power industry.
Perhaps, as netizens said, people feel that power outages in China are an abnormal thing, which in itself is the biggest praise for China's power industry.
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