Nanjing eyeing for a 'Silicon Valley'

Jiangsu province's capital Nanjing — a semi-provincial megacity with some 9.57 million residents living in 11 districts — has developed into a national advanced manufacturing base.

Among the city's 500 major projects slated for this year, 228 are focused on advanced manufacturing. The Xinde Technology Artificial Intelligence Advanced Packaging and Testing Base Project initiated construction work with a total investment of 5.5 billion yuan ($774 million).

Located in Jiangbei New Area, the base will have an annual packaging capacity of 300 million high-performance chips upon completion, becoming a key player in Nanjing's "Silicon Valley" aspirations.

Divided into two phases, the project will witness its first phase — with an input of 1 billion yuan — usher in a modern factory occupying 153,000 square meters. Equipped with advanced production equipment, it will focus on the challenges of packaging AI computing chips to precisely meet the high-performance packaging needs of 5G communication and automotive-grade chips.

"The scale of this project is immense, while its demand for construction electricity is high," said Zhou Hongxiang, a manager from State Grid Nanjing's Jiangbei New Area Power Supply Co, adding that power supply for the base must be safe and stable, as when its production lines start operation, electricity requirements will climb further.

To help the project start its operations as soon as possible, State Grid Nanjing tailor-made a high-quality power supply plan for it which meets current construction needs while reserving sufficient load margin for future production, Zhou said.

He said that as they consider major projects in the city as a stabilizer and propeller of economic growth, State Grid Nanjing has implemented an "Electric Engine" special action campaign to enhance services for major projects, having conducted power connection work for 38 projects at the provincial and municipal level.

While northern Nanjing strives to build a "Silicon Valley "for integrated circuit industry development, Lishui in southern Nanjing has made new energy vehicles one of its pillars.

On July 4, Nanjing Ecar Technology Co Ltd, a leading enterprise in the field of urban service vehicle manufacturing, moved to its new production plant in Lishui Economic Development Zone.

In late February, Du Wanyun — general manager of Ecar's Lishui project — submitted an application for 3,000 kilovolt amperes of electricity to the local power supply company for the new factory.

The local power supplier formulated a power supply plan for it through a government-enterprise data sharing platform, thus simultaneously advancing the power supporting project with the factory construction.

"The power supply company is very efficient. The related manager also briefed us on the policies concerning electricity prices, peak-avoidance use and fast implementation work, enabling us to optimize our production schedules," said Du.

When the new factory of Ecar is put into production, its production scale is expected to reach an annual output of 20,000 unmanned vehicles for each shift.