China’s AI Power Play: Cheap Electricity From World’s Biggest Grid

Read the full article here.

China’s campaign to expand its power grid dates back to the 1970s. Communist Party leaders, worried that electricity shortages would hamper the nation’s development, steered state-owned companies to build hundreds of coal-fired power plants. Later, they bet on renewables, bankrolling enormous hydroelectric projects, solar fields and wind farms.

Because the best locations were often far away from population centers in the east, China also erected the world’s biggest network of ultrahigh-voltage transmission lines, investing more than $50 billion since 2021, according to state media.

China now has the biggest power grid the world has ever seen. Between 2010 and 2024, its power production increased by more than the rest of the world combined. Last year, China generated more than twice as much electricity as the U.S. Some Chinese data centers are now paying less than half what American ones pay for electricity.

“In China, electricity is our competitive advantage,” Liu Liehong, head of China’s National Data Administration, said in March.

Source: Wikipedia