China is set to take a commanding lead in the smart grid market now that the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) has announced it will install over 300 million smart meters by the end of 2015, according to research report by Zpryme.

Sustainablebusiness.com reports that they will use technology mostly from the US and Taiwan to do it, with Landis+Gyr and General Electric both actively involved.



SGCC supplies power to over a billion people, 88 per cent of China's population. Rather than retrofitting the equipment to an outdated transmission system, the company has the advantage of being able to build it into infrastructure from scratch.

As of 2011, SGCC has installed 36 million smart meters, and plans to invest about $100bn in smart grid technologies as part of a $400bn investment in transmission infrastructure across the country.

China plans to spend about $473bn under its five year plan for the build-out of 15 GW of solar and 100 GW of wind - the transmission infrastructure is critical so all that new energy can connect to the grid. 

SGCC says it will finish the transmission infrastructure by 2016, creating a unified national grid in China for the first time.

SGCC has already tested 238 smart grid pilot projects to solve technical issues and develop management systems. Based on this, they released a set of standards and criteria for smart grid technology.

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