How high-voltage DC could rewire the global grid
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In 2019, China’s State Grid energized a massive, world-record-setting, 1.1-million-volt direct current (DC) power line. Dubbed the “Power Silk Road,” the Changji-Guquan line is still the longest high-voltage direct current (HVDC) line in the world. It is also the most powerful: 12,000 megawatts of electricity, equivalent to 12 power plants, enough to power 50 million Chinese homes.
The line begins in Xinjiang, a vast, remote desert region in northwestern China that was once an important stop along the original Silk Road. There, a giant converter station swallows the alternating current pouring out of one of the country's biggest wind and solar belts and converts it into a million-volt river of direct current. That river then flows east for roughly 3,300 kilometers (>2,000 miles), through six provinces, over the Yangtze River, and into a second converter station in Anhui province, in eastern China, where it is converted back to alternating current (AC) and fed into the grid powering China's densely populated east.
The Changji-Guquan line also embodies one of China’s greatest ambitions. In 2016, Liu Zhenya, then Chairman of China's State Grid Corporation, presented his vision for a Global Energy Interconnection: a planet-wide network of clean-energy superhighways linking over 100 countries and 80% of the global population with 180,000 kilometers of ultra-high-voltage power lines. In a presentation at IHS CERAWeek that year, he painted a vivid picture: “Eventually, our world will turn into a peaceful and harmonious global village, a community of common destiny for all mankind with sufficient energy, blue skies and green land.”
Source: GEIDCO