Changji–Guquan ±1100 kV UHVDC link

node · earth · Xinjiang to Anhui, China

The ultra-high-voltage direct-current line from Changji in Xinjiang to Guquan in Anhui province, commissioned by State Grid Corporation of China in 2019, and at the time of writing the highest-voltage and longest transmission link of its kind in operation: approximately 3,300 kilometres at plus and minus 1,100 kilovolts, with a design transfer capability of about twelve gigawatts. It exists because China's wind, solar and coal resources are overwhelmingly in the north and west while its load is overwhelmingly in the east and south, a mismatch of roughly two to three thousand kilometres that no amount of local generation resolves. The engineering significance is that raising the voltage raises transfer capability and cuts losses per unit delivered, which is what makes continental-scale transfer economic at all; the political significance is that a link on this scale is a single decision by a single vertically integrated operator, which is precisely the condition that most liberalised electricity markets do not have. It is a route rather than a point, spanning six provincial-level administrative divisions, and is deliberately given no single coordinate here.