In late December last year Siemens Energy and China Southern Power Grid put into operation the first pole of an HVDC system of unprecedented scale and magnitude and created two new benchmarks in HVDC technology. With a capacity of 5000 MW and covering a distance of more than 1400 km the Yunnan-Guangdon transmission system is the world’s most powerful of its kind to have been implemented. At the same time it is the first HVDC link operating at a transmission voltage of 800 kV. Commissioning of the second pole and startup of the full system is scheduled for mid-2010.
China has raised the DC voltage of its new long-distance HVDC links to 800 kV in order to reduce transmission losses and to be able to bridge even greater distances than the 1000 km or so that has already been achieved in several long distance lines. This interconnector will serve to transmit power generated by several hydro power plants in central China to the rapidly growing industrial region in the Pearl River delta in Guangdong Province with its megacities Guangzhou and Shenzhen. This system can reduce by over 30 megatonnes annual CO2 emissions that would otherwise have been produced by additional fossil-fueled power plants linked to the interconnected grid in Guangdong Province.
“Successful commissioning of the first pole of currently the world’s most powerful HVDC system shows that our efforts to get 800 kV HVDC technology ready for concrete projects have paid off" said Udo Niehage, CEO of the Power Transmission Division of Siemens Energy.
Together with its Chinese partners Siemens designed the entire HVDC system for the Yunnan-Guangdong project and supplied the core components, which included 800 kV and 60 -kV converter transformers, DC filters and 800 kV DC components.
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