From this remote landscape of light and sand, in the Ningxia Autonomous Region, a power line stretches across mountains, plateaus and valleys to reach Hengyang, in the industrial heart of Hunan Province in the south. Along more than 1,000 miles of cables and steel towers flows part of the electricity that keeps the country running: the ultra-high voltage (UHV) infrastructure that China is using to protect its grid from blackouts and redraw its energy map in the midst of its race toward ecological transition.
Even more worrying is how much less reliable the grid has become. The US has had 64% more large grid failures in the last ten years. Most of these outages were caused by extreme weather events related to climate change, such as hurricanes, wildfires, and heat waves. Because of this unpredictability, there is a strong need for clean, independent, and stable energy solutions, especially ones that can store and manage solar electricity in case the grid goes down.