Power upgrades help farmers meet green goals

State Grid Corp of China, the world's largest utility which is crucial to China's energy security and economic lifeline, is thinking of innovative ways to help bolster rural vitalization by incorporating more new energy.

Earlier, it released its new energy services development report 2025 saying it is accelerating the construction of a new power system to aid Chinese modernization.

The report said that in 2024, China's newly added new-energy capacity was 360 million kilowatts, exceeding the cumulative scale of new energy in the United States, and leading its cumulative installed capacity to hit 1.41 billion kW.

Under the prefecture-level city of Huanggang in Hubei province, Leijiadian is dubbed the largest "tea town" in Yingshan county, and Wanchong village — with tea being its first pillar industry — is an economic powerhouse in Leijiadian.

With tea serving as the main source of income for local families, Hu Fang and other villagers often brought tea leaves they plucked to tea factories in the village for processing.

The traditional processing mainly relies on manual labor, burning firewood or coal to supply heat. But as Yingshan is pursuing its dual carbon goals — peaking carbon before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060 — electric tea-making has gradually replaced traditional practices.

"The transformation to electric tea-making can help largely lower costs and ensure continuous production in spring, summer and autumn, thus doubling the income of tea farmers," said the head of Ke Youpeng Tea Factory in the village.

During the transformation, State Grid Yingshan County Power Supply Co acted quickly by launching a two-pronged approach — bolstering the rapid development of distributed photovoltaics in rural areas and installing energy storage equipment for tea factories.

"The balance in power supply problems between the tea-making plants and the surrounding users has been well handled," said Wang Zhao, Party secretary of Wanchong.

"We achieved a balance in photovoltaic energy storage charging and discharging, thus serving tea production with photovoltaic green electricity," said Feng Xiang, chief of Leijiadian Power Supply Station under State Grid Yingshan.

The local power supplier also increased charging piles in rural areas, and standardized the distributed PV power generation projects, facilitating the efficient utilization of local solar energy resources, Feng said.

Meanwhile, in East China's Zhejiang province, Xikou in the city of Ningbo, is doing its part to help boost rural vitalization with new energy.

To help the Yinlong Bamboo Shoots Professional Cooperative in Fenghua district — whose 271 members are taking advantage of bamboo shoots with annual sales exceeding 700 million yuan ($98.6 million) — State Grid Fenghua quickly installed a 250 kilovolt-ampere transformer in advance, meeting its rising needs.

"We aim to build a green, intelligent and reliable rural energy system to support the sustainable development of clean energy in rural areas," Feng from Leijiadian Power Supply Station said.