China will likely lead the world in the smart grid market now that the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) announced it will install over 300 million smart meters by the end of 2015, according to research report by Zpryme.
And they will use technology mostly from the US and Taiwan to do it. Landis+Gyr and General Electric are both actively working on this.
SGCC supplies power to over a billion people, 88% of China’s population. Rather than retrofitting the equipment to an outdated transmission system, the company has the advantage of being able to build it into infrastructure from scratch.
As of 2011, SGCC has installed 36 million smart meters, and plans to invest about $100 billion in smart grid technologies as part of a $400 billion investment in transmission infrastructure across the country.
China plans to spend about $473 billion under its five year plan for the build-out of 15 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 100 GW of wind – the transmission infrastructure is critical so all that new energy can connect to the grid.
SGCC says it will finish the transmission infrastructure by 2016, creating a unified national grid in China for the first time.
Imagine the US being able to accomplish that?!
SGCC has already tested 238 smart grid pilot projects to solve technical issues and develop management systems. Based on this, they released a set of standards and criteria for smart grid technology.
SGCC is also working on electric vehicle charging to the grid and large renewable energy storage systems, such as BYD’s battery bank that’s the size of a football field.
"The large-scale implementation of green energy can only be realized when the technical difficulties of this new energy application in the utility system are resolved," says Xiu Binglin, Deputy Director of China’s National Energy Administration. "This State Grid project demonstrates a solution and will be the model of development for China’s new energy resources."
Here’s the report:
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