China has completed the grid upgrade for small towns and central villages, ensuring power supply for pumping wells and impoverished villages, in a new round of power grid upgrades for rural areas launched in 2016, said Qi Chengyuan, deputy head of the National Energy Administration, at a news conference on June 28.

He said a three-year (2018-2020) action plan is also under way, targeting the grid over the “three regions and three prefectures” with harsh natural conditions and border villages.

The plan will cover 8,769 villages in 210 counties and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, benefiting 25.42 million people. Isolated counties in the Tibet autonomous region will be connected to the grid at a faster pace.

Meanwhile, more villages will be connected to a photovoltaic generation system, a poverty alleviation project for many rural families.

According to the briefing, the central government will spend 36.1 billion yuan on rural grid upgrades in 2019, of which 1.4 billion yuan will support poverty-stricken regions. The “three regions and three prefectures” will receive the lion’s share, 64.9 percent, up from 50.9 percent in 2018.

The new round of grid upgrades has improved the power supply and reliability in rural areas, while bringing down the electricity rates to the urban level, said Zhu Ming, another senior official from the administration.

From 2016 to 2019, Qi said, a total of 830 billion yuan is expected to be invested in the rural grid upgrade, including about 78.7 billion yuan from enterprises, banks, and local governments.

In addition to construction, the investment also drives up the development of power equipment manufacturing, especially for private enterprises, which has in turn promoted employment and the economy.

With improving power grids, rural areas also see rising power consumption every year. In 2018, total electricity consumption reached 2.46 trillion kWh, up 30 percent from 2015.

Better power infrastructure also enables villagers to upgrade their home appliances. In agricultural production, the replacement of fossil fuels has reduced air pollution.

The power grid also boosted the development of e-commerce, logistics, rural tourism, new energy, as well as rural and township construction, Qi said.