Power Supply Mission Accomplished During Severe Cold Waves

At 23:00 on February 28, power supplies to all users, dramatically impacted by a massive cold wave that has previously slammed into the Guangxi Power Grid, have been resumed as China Southern Power Grid engineers resumed power throughout the impacted areas.
Confronted with two rounds of cold waves that began since January 27 of this year, CSG senior managers released multiple warnings and directed its engineering staff to respond proactively to make the necessary adjustments to power grid operation modes, which in turn enabled the efficient ice melting and full staff efforts to conduct emergency repairs. As a result, electricity was restored to more than 60% of the affected users within 24 hours, and for all users within 48 hours, which was the fastest percentage under the same scale of disasters.
“The coldest Spring Festival in the past decade,” “The rate of ice formation is rare in history,” “The depth of snow breaks the record” ...
From January to February of this year, many places were repeatedly hit by these severe winter weather storms that included low temperatures, rain and snow and freezing conditions. Electricity transmission lines in some areas were ice-covered, bringing significant challenges to power grid supplies.
In particular, the cold wave that hit Guangxi during a four-day period between February 20 to 24 featured a, “drastic drop in temperature and a wide range of extremely low temperatures, with rain and snow.”
It was the most severe cold weather in the same period in South China since 1996.
The depth of snow set a new record at some power facilities stations in the Yunnan-Guizhou area. Consequently, 924 electricity transmission lines above 10 kV of CSG were saturated by ice in the worst weather conditions.
During the cold wave, CSG staff kept its emergency operational online running 24 hours and made full use of technology to observe, melt and remove ice.
More than 58,000 staff and engineers worked tirelessly, day and night, to protect the flow of power supplies and conduct anti-icing methods, breaking the record of the post-disaster power restoration in recent years.
There is no question that the global climate remains unstable and extreme cold and warm events arise frequently.
Based on the ice distribution map and the covering situation over these years, CSG engineers quickly identify sections prone to or repeatedly covered by ice. This aids in improving anti-icing guidelines, equipment and technology guidelines and other institutional standards as well as accelerating the implementation of anti-icing projects in the principle of targeted measures.
During Year 2022, China Southern Power Grid senior leaders plan to invest 2.1 billion yuan in renovating transmission lines that have been damaged due to the ice resistance and that are smaller than 10 mm in the ice map as well as the installation of icing monitoring devices and ice-melting devices.
Concurrently, CSG senior leaders will formulate plans to organize technical experts that will carry out further research on the impact of icing and make accurate predictions to the rapid icing process in micro-meteorological areas.