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January 19, 2018

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State Grid gift to Inner Mongolia villages

As night falls on Qiqian Village, locals turn on the lights. It shines through their windows and the entire village glows.

For residents of Qiqian, the light heralds a new era.

At the end of 2017, stable electricity supply finally reached Qiqian after the 11 families there spent almost half a century enduring power shortages at night. Now all towns and villages in Inner Mongolia have access to stable electricity.

In villager Liu Shuxia鈥檚 house, light illuminated the entire living room. Steam floated up from just-cooked rice, and Liu鈥檚 son was busy doing homework.

鈥淚n the past, we shared a solar-wind hybrid electricity system with the border troops here, and when the weather was bad, we did not have enough electricity at all,鈥 Liu recalled. 鈥淲e only cooked rice once a week.

鈥淣ow we can cook whenever we want, and my child can study in the light,鈥 she said.

Qiqian sits in the heartland of the Greater Higgan Mountains on the China-Russia border. It is Inner Mongolia鈥檚 northernmost village. The closest town is 342km away.

鈥淭he electricity problem has always been a stumbling block hampering Qiqian鈥檚 development. There was a shortage of electricity, and the power was unstable,鈥 said Shao Rimin, a local Party official. 鈥淭he wind-solar hybrid system equipment was also getting old.鈥

In November, a local branch of the State Grid upgraded the photovoltaic system and set up another, which was put into use on December 31.

鈥淎s Qiqian is extremely cold in the winter and the ground was frozen, it was very difficult to conduct the project,鈥 an official of the State Grid branch said. 鈥淚t took us a lot of effort and heavy machinery to complete.鈥

In 2017, the State Grid invested more than 3.3 billion yuan (US$467 million) to help 400,000 families in 3,055 villages in Inner Mongolia get access to electricity.


 

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