Building India's grid: an examination of the infrastructure benefits of HVDC transmission and how the experiences benefit China

摘要

India has a population of over 1 billion people, which is growing at a rate of 1.7% per annum. Its economy is growing rapidly and such changes make strong demands on the country's infrastructure. A stable and reliable electricity supply system is a key requirement but achievement of this in such a large country with rapid and diverse growth is a complex problem requiring both technical, economic and political initiatives. The country's electricity transmission and distribution system has progressed through several stages. In the 1960's it was limited to individual grids within each state, with local state owned power plants, and then in the mid 1970s some of these state grids were interconnected to form separate regional grids along with their own Regional Grid Control Centres. The concept of forming a national grid for this large country was first mooted in 1980, but it was not until 1989 that institutional structures were put in place to bring it about and The Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (POWERGRID) could be established. The creation of a national grid was a major objective for POWERGIUD. The initiation of the interconnection to form the national grid has been achieved using HVDC. China by comparison is a much larger country, less densely populated on average but with concentrations to the east and on all coasts. The State Power Corporation (SP) was established in 1997 to provide a countrywide administration of the power system facilities. This paper describes the benefits realised in India by forming a National Grid using RVDC and speculates on the value of the same approach in China.