China's Power Supply in 2025: Over 10 Trillion kWh and Grid Connection Without Office Visits

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has summed up 2025, the final year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, in its annual power supply report. It covers not only grid and consumption statistics but also the reform of grid connection services, which, according to the report, saved applicants more than 300 billion yuan over the five-year period.

Scale: 10 Trillion kWh and a Million Kilometers of Lines

In 2025, China’s electricity consumption exceeded 10 trillion kWh for the first time, reaching 10.37 trillion kWh, up 5.0% and in line with GDP growth. According to the report, that is more than twice the annual consumption of the United States and more than the combined consumption of the EU, Russia, India and Japan.

The grid is growing along with demand:

• grid investment totaled 639.5 billion yuan, of which 321.8 billion went to distribution networks of 110 kV and below;
• lines of 220 kV and above exceeded 1 million km, and distribution lines of 10-110 kV reached about 9 million km by preliminary estimates;
• 24 ultra-high-voltage DC lines and 21 AC lines cross the country;
• inter-provincial power flows reached 2,123.7 billion kWh (up 6.3%), and inter-regional flows 998.4 billion kWh (up 7.9%).

There were no rolling blackouts or power rationing during the year. Average outage time per customer in urban areas of Beijing, Shanghai and several other cities fell below one hour, and in the central districts of some cities it is measured in minutes. A total of 2,889 organizations hold power supply licenses: about 70% belong to State Grid and about 13% to China Southern Power Grid.

Who Uses the Electricity

The number of customers reached 783.67 million at the end of 2025, including 680.82 million households. In 2021, there were 658.76 million. The consumption structure:

• industry and construction (secondary sector): 6.64 trillion kWh, 64.0%, up 3.7%;
• services (tertiary sector): 1.99 trillion kWh, 19.2%, up 8.2%;
• households: 1.59 trillion kWh, 15.3%, up 6.3%;
• agriculture: 0.15 trillion kWh, 1.5%, up 9.9%.

Services and households delivered 50% of consumption growth. Electricity accounts for about 30% of the country’s final energy consumption, and renewable generation covered 38.5% of consumption: almost 4 out of every 10 kWh are “green.”

New requested connection capacity reached 861 million kVA (up 3.5%). Services filed the most requests: 314 million kVA, up 8.3%. Industrial and commercial customers have fully moved from regulated tariffs to the electricity market, and grid companies purchased 1.69 trillion kWh on behalf of those who do not buy directly.

Connection: “Three Zeros” and “Three Savings”

The reform rests on two schemes. “Three zeros” for low-voltage connection means zero office visits, zero approvals and zero investment by the applicant. “Three savings” for high-voltage connection means saving time, effort and money. In 2025, applicants saved more than 70 billion yuan on connection.

• “Three zeros” now covers all private businesses with capacity of up to 160 kW, saving more than 40 billion yuan. In 44 cities the threshold was raised to 200 kW, and in Shenzhen to 320 kW, which covers almost 80% of the city’s private enterprises, or 2.83 million companies.
• A total of 65,900 public QR-code connection points were set up for night markets, street vendors and tourist campsites.
• “Three savings” saved applicants more than 30 billion yuan, and 14,900 major projects were served.
• Joint connection to water, power, gas and internet was processed in 111,200 cases, and the “real estate plus power account transfer” bundle in 2.6765 million cases.

The principle of “power waits for the business” works literally: the grid is brought to the edge of land plots in advance, and cables are laid together with roads and utility tunnels to avoid digging twice. In Chongqing, 27 standard “power supply packages” were designed for small businesses in 7 industries: capacity is selected based on floor area and equipment, and 13,700 companies saved 109 million yuan on equipment.

Digital Services and AI

Grid company apps have 572 million registered users, and more than 97% of services are handled online. The industry’s large models “Guangming” and “Big Watt” automatically produced more than 2 million power supply designs during the year, and the smart customer service handled more than 100 million requests. At State Grid, the accuracy of automatic designs exceeds 99.5%, and at China Southern Power Grid, machines replace humans in 89% of key scenarios.

Reliability, Quality and Green Power

The NEA’s three-year campaign against frequent outages (2023-2025) has been completed: more than 40,000 problems on lines and transformer areas were fixed, the share of lines with frequent outages fell from 5.55% to 0.63%, and complaints dropped by more than 70% compared with the period before the campaign. The new task is power quality for high-tech manufacturing, above all protection against voltage sags. One example is Gui’an, a computing network hub: 99.999% reliability with a 500 MW load.

Grids are also being hardened against natural disasters. In 2025, utilities dealt with the aftermath of heavy rains in North China, Guizhou and Guangdong and typhoons Ragasa and Matmo. Hunan spent 2.597 billion yuan on protecting distribution networks against disasters and built or upgraded 959 lines of 10 kV with a total length of more than 7,000 km.

The green part of the report looks like this:

• distributed solar generation added 153 GW, or 48.3% of all new solar capacity;
• there are more than 20 million electric vehicle chargers, and in 19 provinces every township has charging;
• there are more than 700,000 smart managed charging units and 8,000 vehicle-to-grid (V2G) units;
• cumulative green power trading exceeded 328.5 billion kWh, and 930 million green certificates were traded (up 108%);
• 470 virtual power plants operate with a regulating capacity of 16.85 GW;
• new energy storage capacity reached 136 GW / 351 GWh, more than 40 times the level at the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan.

Households, Oversight and Plans for 2026

During the year, 17,000 residential complexes that had received power through intermediaries were switched to direct supply from grid companies, covering 7.8 million customers. The central budget allocated 5 billion yuan to rural grids, which leveraged more than 160 billion yuan in investment. On Wailingding and Dangan islands in Zhuhai, China Southern Power Grid took over supply, and tariffs were brought in line with urban rates, saving residents 22 million yuan a year. In the Awa Mountains area of Yunnan, average outage time in 2025 fell 77.7% compared with 2021. The 95598 hotline received 106 million requests with satisfaction above 97%, and the 12398 energy oversight hotline received 33,000 complaints and reports.

For 2026, the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, the NEA sets five tasks:

• consolidate “three zeros,” “three savings” and digital processing, and embed AI more deeply in customer service;
• develop a new-type grid and run a power quality campaign, including voltage sags;
• simplify connection of charging infrastructure and promote green power among large consumers;
• equalize urban and rural services and bring grids in old neighborhoods up to standard;
• strengthen oversight with big data and AI.

The report’s main message: China treats grid connection as part of the business environment rather than a technical formality. For businesses, this is measured in money and time: more than 300 billion yuan saved over five years, with almost everything handled online.