Innovations made in Shandong to boost power supply

In East China's Shandong province, Linqing is a land-locked city under the prefecture-level city of Liaocheng in western Shandong, but it is trying to attract more investors with its unique features.

After 40 years of development, Linqing has formed a bearing-industry cluster centering on Yandian town and radiating to many surrounding towns and villages. Yandian's bearing market has become the country's largest, most varied and most complete one, while Yandian is now dubbed "the hometown of bearings in China".

Covering an area of 129 hectares, the Yandian Bearing Industrial Park is the largest bearing industrial park in China, with a total investment of 4 billion yuan ($559 million). Its first phase, covering 23.5 hectares, can afford 200 enterprises to do businesses at 47 multi-story buildings.

Currently, more than 40 bearing industrial enterprises — from such provinces as Hebei, Hubei, Zhejiang and Heilongjiang — have entered the park, with more expected to come, said the city government.

But the fast industrial development calls for sufficient electric power support, said Yang Yanhui, chief engineer of Shandong Liaocheng Power Supply Co of the State Grid — the world's largest utility which shoulders a dual task of safeguarding the country's energy security as well as its economic lifeline.

To meet the region's expanding electric power needs, his agency has made timely innovations to boost the electric power supply, he said.

On March 2, it successfully put the 220 kV (kilovolt) Changshun Substation into operation, making Linqing the first county-level region in Liaocheng to own four 220 kV substations.

As the first "modular 2.0" demonstration substation with a voltage level of 220kV for the power grid in Shandong, the Changshun Substation was a major innovation for them, playing a key role in improving Liaocheng's power supply reliability and optimizing the region's power grid structure, Yang said.

From the 220 kV substation, its 10 kV distribution lines can be directly connected to the surrounding load of Yandian Bearing Industrial Park, fully guaranteeing the power demand of the park's enterprises, he said.

"With the support of sufficient electricity, we have more confidence in our future development," noted Yan Xiuyun, head of Linqing Ximao Precision Bearing Co Ltd.

Yang disclosed during the construction process, Changshun Substation witnessed the building of Shandong's first intelligent construction-site management and control platform, with "wireless access, non-inductive use, seamless connection and intelligent interconnection".

The intelligent control platform has allowed the builders to raise civil-engineering efficiency by 20 percent, while saving over 350,000 yuan in labor and machinery costs, he said.

In a related development, Linqing is also upgrading its Luxi (Western Shandong) International Land Port — by relying on the Beijing-Kowloon Railway and railway freight yards — in a bid to radiate a radius of over 300 kilometers, and connect with the Maritime Silk Road in the east and the Eurasian Continental Bridge in the west.

As the first stop in Shandong of Beijing-Kowloon Railway and sitting on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal linking the north and the south, Linqing is an important gateway for "Shandong to reach the western region, and for Shanxi and Hebei to link with the outside in the east."

Upon receiving the land port's expanded electricity application on Nov 3, the Shandong Liaocheng Power Supply Co immediately launched a three-in-one service for handling application, electricity installation and connection with high standards, and set up a "one-stop" service team to better serve the land port, said Guo Yashu, a staffer from the Liaocheng Power Supply Co.

She said her unit also improved power transmission efficiency through its "cloud services" for the land port, which greeted the new power transmission on Nov 17.