XINING — China has realized universal power access when connecting the last remote group of 39,800 people were connected to the national grid.

The lights came on Dec 23 in Gomang and Changjiang villages in Qinghai province, the last group nationwide without modern lighting.

The 9,614 households are at an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters in the remote hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, said Shi Xueqian, Communist Party Chief of Qinghai Power Company.

The company spent 2.1 billion yuan ($324 million) and more than 5,000 workers were involved in the operation.

“This means Qinghai has provided power access to its whole population and China has fulfilled its goal of providing electricity to all people without power set out in the 12th Five-Year Plan,” said Tan Rongchun, a senior official of the National Energy Administration (NEA).

At the end of 2012, China had 2.73 million people without electricity, mainly in Xinjiang, Sichuan, Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and Inner Mongolia. Qinghai had about 470,000 people without power.

After a three-year action plan of the NEA, the 39,800 people in Qinghai became the last without power.