China has made substantial improvements in ensuring reliable electricity supply in recent years, leading to a significant drop in power outages across both urban and rural regions, said officials and industry experts.

For the past 40 years, China's electricity reliability has been among the best globally. Last year, the power supply reliability rate reached around 99.97 percent in urban areas and 99.91 percent in rural areas, demonstrating a world-leading level, said Lu Junling, chief economist of the National Energy Administration.

As technology advances and information breakthroughs like AI develop, the intelligence level of power equipment and technical standards have been continuously increasing, said Lu, adding that this provides new perspectives and tools for managing electricity reliability.

The China Electricity Council said significant investment and technological progress have positioned China as the operator of the world's most advanced power grid.

Figures released by the council reveal that national power supply reliability rose to 99.924 percent last year, a dramatic increase compared to that of the early 1990s, when urban households experienced an average of 96.54 hours of power outages each year.

Lu said that with new energy resources progressively dominating both installed power generation capacity and overall electricity supply in the future, the large-scale integration of renewable energy into the grid network is expected to lead to significant changes in both electricity supply and consumption patterns.

Concurrently, the recent widespread deployment of new equipment and technologies, while boosting production efficiency, also introduces new challenges, imposing elevated requirements on electricity reliability management, he said.

State grid operators across the country have been stepping up efforts and investment to enhance its capacity to absorb distributed renewable energy.

China Southern Power Grid, for example, vowed to continue increasing investment in rural grid construction. It has invested over 170 billion yuan ($23.68 billion) in rural grid networks during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), with 31.2 billion yuan allocated for this year.

Investments will be further increased during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30) to improve the situation, it said.