Energy SOEs Ramp up Development of the “Six Networks” Through Joint Efforts and Project-Driven Implementation

On September 2, the National Development and Reform Commission convened a coordination and promotion mechanism meeting for major “Six Networks” projects to specifically deploy the development of the national “Six Networks” project repository as well as government-bank-enterprise collaboration. One day earlier, on September 1, the National Energy Administration held a work deployment meeting on new-type power grids, laying out key tasks in full for new-type power grid development. Held back-to-back, the two meetings—one setting the strategic direction and the other focusing on implementation — send a clear signal: development of the “Six Networks” has transitioned from institutional framework building to hands-on execution featuring project delivery, capital allocation and multi-party coordination.

The new-type power grid serves as the core hub for coordinated development across the six networks. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China’s electricity demand will maintain an annual growth rate of around 5 %, with a rising share of new-energy generation and rapid emergence of new models and business forms such as computing-power-electricity integration, placing higher demands on new-type power grids. The work deployment meeting hosted by the National Energy Administration pointed out that building new-type power grids represents a profound transformation involving new architectures, new technologies and new services. Efforts will be made to shore up infrastructure strengths, leverage the leading role of innovation, strengthen diversified support guarantees, uphold the bottom line of safe operation, accelerate the approval and construction of major power-transmission corridor projects, and support private enterprises in actively investing in new-type power grid development. Total investment related to the “Six Networks” nationwide is expected to exceed RMB 7 trillion this year, while investment in new-type power grids will surpass RMB 5 trillion over the 15th Five-Year Plan period. With top-level design rolled out, major energy and power enterprises have moved swiftly to launch internal implementation systems at both corporate headquarters and provincial subsidiaries, covering power grid and power-generation segments alike.

Top-level Policy Guidance Drives Full-scale Roll-out of Enterprise Implementation Systems

National-level authorities have established mechanisms, issued policies and built project repositories. Policy signals have been passed down to enterprises, which have quickly put in place internal implementation frameworks with differentiated priorities. Power grid enterprises focus on rolling project management mechanisms, while power-generation central SOEs draw on advantages on the power-supply side to make arrangements starting from green-electricity provision.

State Grid Corporation of China has aligned itself with the national “2+3+N” collaborative dispatching mechanism, rolled out 20 measures to promote coordinated development of new-energy resources and computing-power facilities, compiled a list of priority projects, and adopted an implementation model featuring “headquarters-level overall planning plus pilot programmes at provincial subsidiaries”.

China Southern Power Grid (CSG) has released a systematic action plan: it has set up a leading group for coordinated development of the “Six Networks” and established the “14511” working framework. It applies the “Five Batches” project-management model — studying a batch of projects, implementing a batch, advancing a batch in preliminary stages, reserving a batch and planning a batch. Clear timelines have been defined: complete top-level design and launch the first-batch demonstration projects by the end of 2026, scale up replication by the end of 2027, and build a collaborative service system covering key regions across the five southern provinces by 2030.

Power-generation central SOEs including China Huaneng, China Datang, China Huadian, SPIC (State Power Investment Corporation) and China Energy Investment Corporation have set up special working teams and compiled repositories of major projects. Local power SOEs align with regional special plans for the “Six Networks”, incorporate power-infrastructure construction into territorial spatial planning, and remove bottlenecks for policy delivery at the local level.

Breaking Cross-domain Barriers: Frequent High-level Outreach by Enterprise Leaders

Sound institutional frameworks alone are insufficient without open collaboration. The “Six Networks” initiative entails complex coordination across industries, regions and stakeholders. Face-to-face dialogues to align interests have become critical to unlocking progress. The high frequency of senior-level business exchanges underscores the urgency of implementation.

At the headquarters level, State Grid has engaged with players from the communications, computing-power and water-conservancy sectors. Its provincial subsidiaries have held intensive meetings with local governments and industrial parks to resolve practical issues such as coordinated planning and parallel project construction.

CSG has maintained particularly active outreach. It held high-level talks with PetroChina, met with State Grid in Guangzhou to discuss joint development of new-type power grids, and engaged with China Telecom and SPIC during the Digital Expo to plan a computing-power interconnection system.

Power-generation central SOEs have also stepped up cross-industry engagement. SPIC has taken the lead among industry peers in concluding agreements with all three major telecom operators: China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom. Wen Shugang, Chairman of China Huaneng, met senior officials from ten provincial-and municipal-level governments including Tianjin, Gansu, Hubei, Hunan and Hebei within two-plus months to discuss cooperation on the “Six Networks”. China Huadian held high-level meetings with State Grid, China Huaneng and TBEA to deepen collaboration on clean-energy development, new-energy base construction and industrial synergy. China Huaneng and China Energy Investment Corporation have held talks with communications enterprises, while China Datang and CGNPC have engaged computing-power-market participants to exchange views on green-electricity direct supply.

Strategic Sign-offs: Turning Handshakes into Binding Agreements

Dialogues are rapidly translating into formal cooperation agreements. Historic partnerships between the two major power grid operators and accelerating computing-power-electricity-synergy initiatives by power-generation central SOEs demonstrate how consensus on six-network coordination is turning into joint action.

The two major grid operators have taken the lead. On 18 August, State Grid and China Southern Power Grid signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement in Guangzhou to jointly advance new-type power-system development and major power-engineering projects, build a unified national power market, and deepen energy-power-technology innovation.

CSG has secured numerous additional agreements. On 28 May it signed a strategic cooperation deal with PetroChina, followed by another with CNOOC on 4 June, to jointly foster an energy-supply ecosystem featuring multi-energy complementarity and sourcegrid coordination. Prior to these deals, CSG had already entered strategic partnerships with multiple energy central SOEs including CNNC, China Huaneng, China Datang, China Huadian, SPIC, Harbin Electric, Dongfang Electric and CGNPC. While these agreements cover conventional-energy segments ranging from oil-gas and nuclear power to thermal power and equipment manufacturing, their core objective is consistent: to boost flexible regulation capacity and large-scale new-energy integration for new-type power grids via multi-energy complementarity and source-grid coordination — a core requirement behind six-network synergy.

CSG further expanded its footprint at the Digital Expo. On 29 August, together with China Telecom and SPIC, it signed a strategic cooperation agreement and formally launched the “1+M+N” Consortium for Advancing Power-industry Nodes of the National Computing-Power Interconnection Node System. Led by CSG, the consortium is building the country’s first industry-level hub for in-depth integration of “power, carbon, computing-power, data and smart networks”, forming an industrial closed loop of “power-grid dispatching plus communication networks plus green-electricity supply”. Meanwhile, CSG co-founded the Electric-Computing-Synergy Industry Alliance alongside computing-power, communications and research institutions.

SPIC became the first in the sector to partner with all three major telecom operators: agreements were reached with China Mobile in July, China Telecom at the Digital Expo in August, and China Unicom in September, all focusing on computing-power-electricity synergy and AI computing-power services. China Huaneng has partnered with China Mobile on computing-power-electricity integration. CGNPC has delivered more than 3 billion kWh of green-electricity for computing-power projects. China Datang and China Energy Investment Corporation have also finalised multiple cooperation arrangements for supplying wind-solar green power directly to computing-power hubs.

Project Delivery: Moving from Paper Plans to On-site Construction

Signed agreements and established frameworks must ultimately deliver tangible projects. A host of benchmark demonstration projects are being pushed forward at pace, serving as concrete yardsticks for measuring progress under the “Six Networks” initiative.

On the power-grid side, State Grid is enhancing highly reliable power supply for computing-power clusters under the East-Data-West-Computing project, piloting minute-level cross-regional dispatching for computing-power loads, advancing cable installation inside comprehensive underground utility tunnels, and deploying charging-swapping facilities for freight hubs.

CSG has built China’s first industry-level integrated operation system for power-carbon-computing-power coordination, compressing carbon-emission-measurement granularity from monthly to minute-level intervals and achieving over 90 % accuracy in computing-power-load forecasting. Its self-developed Nanwang Shenji mobile computing-power vehicle enables rapid integrated deployment of power, computing-power and cooling services and can go online within six to eight hours after arrival on-site. The PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of its liquid-cooled computing-power container in Gui’an has dropped below 1.15. Demonstration projects including multi-function integrated substations in Guangzhou, joint dispatching of hydro-wind-solar-storage-computing resources in Yunnan-Guizhou, power compartments in comprehensive utility tunnels, and shared access to power-transmission towers are also advancing.

On the power-generation side, benchmark projects carry strong industrial-demonstration value. SPIC has built the world’s first 100 % green-electricity-supplied micro-grid computing-power centre in Qaidam, Qinghai. Its partnerships with telecom operators are evolving from framework agreements to real-world computing-power deployment. At China Datang’s Zhongwei Cloud Base project in Ningxia, 500 MW of photovoltaic capacity has been commissioned. Adopting an innovative “physical direct supply plus bilateral trading” model, supporting wind-power facilities are scheduled for grid-connection in September, capable of meeting 2.29 billion kWh of annual electricity consumption for computing-power loads. Pilot computing-power-electricity-synergy industrial parks and integrated-energy stations are sprouting across the country, alongside expanded investment in pumped-storage plants and large-scale wind-solar bases.

From top-level institutional design to on-site project execution, the “Six Networks” initiative is swiftly turning planning blueprints into real-world outcomes. Through loan-investment linkage and collaborative joint efforts, energy and power central SOEs are translating national strategies into tangible construction activity.