China’s grid science aids Arab countries

YINCHUAN: Deng Guoxue, 40, is sanguine about his company’s future cooperation with Arab countries in power infrastructure construction after participating in a project that installed 5 million electricity meters in Saudi Arabia in order to establish a power consumption information collection system.

During their busiest time, the engineer from the Ningxia branch of the State Grid Corp. of China and his team set up 1.5 million electricity meters within 300 days in the foreign country.

Thankfully, their hard work paid off, as the system started operation in October 2021.

The agreement for the project was signed by the State Grid Corp. of China and Saudi Electricity Co. in 2019, and included the installation of electricity meters in nine southern provinces in Saudi Arabia and the development of supporting facilities for power supply lines.

Technology services, equipment integration, trial tests, and maintenance and personnel training were also part of the project which marked the first whole electricity consumption information collection system exported from China to overseas.

Deng’s team was in charge of the project construction in Najran, located in the south of Saudi Arabia. They found it quite challenging due to the local arid and hot climate, unique terrain and the alien cultural environment, but still inspiring as it could become a helpful reference for future project construction efforts in foreign countries.

“The most difficult part was to train the local personnel how to run the system. We designed the curriculum, prepared textbooks and materials, as well as built a real-scenario experiment workshop with simulation equipment all on our own,” Deng recalled.

“Because of the language and cultural barriers, we had to spend extra hours on interaction with the foreign students, sometimes in our dormitory,” the senior engineer added. Deng has been working for the company’s branch in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region since 2008.

The Ningxia branch of the Chinese company is also working with another Arab country, Oman, to help the country upgrade its grid. Last year, State Grid Corp. of China sent a team on a field trip to Oman.

“The project is aimed at modernizing Oman’s grid system, which remains largely unchanged since 1967, with severe imbalances of power supply between its northern and southern parts,” said Ma Jun, a member of the 40-person team in charge of the project.

With abundant experience in green energy development and research, Ningxia hopes to take its clean power technologies to the Gulf region, which now relies on fossil oil and natural gas for power generation, while boasting rich wind and solar resources.

Facing the challenge of fossil oil depletion, Oman plans to raise the proportion of green power to 20 percent of its total power generation by 2026, thus demanding a complete renovation of its grid system.

“Through building a new grid system which introduces green energy and helps power source transformation, we are expected to help them solve the imminent problem of oil resource depletion as well,” said Ma.

Currently, Ningxia is also running a joint laboratory with Oman to carry out experiments on how to quickly introduce new energy into the grid system of Oman while maintaining the stability of power supply, according to the State Grid Corp. of China.