It is well known that the transmission lines from the southwest provinces and the Three Gorges to Guangdong all need to pass through the mountain canyons and heavy ice areas of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan and other provinces. To construct high-performance transmission lines in these areas, it is obviously not enough and unreasonable to use only steel-cored aluminum strands. After repeated demonstration by experts, steel-cored aluminum alloy strand will be the most important new type of wire, which will be used in these projects. So many long-distance, ultra-high voltage transmission lines need to be built in a relatively short time, which provides a new and most important development opportunity for aluminum alloy conductor manufacturers in China.
So how many aluminum conductor are needed each year? In 2000, the amount of overhead transmission lines in China was about 600,000 tons, of which only thousands of tons of aluminum alloy conductors, accounting for about 1% of the total demand, which is a very small number. During the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, it is estimated that the transmission line will grow at 10% ground speed, and the annual consumption of overhead transmission line will be about 90-100 tons in 2005. If we take 5% of overhead transmission line as the consumption of aluminum alloy conductor, that is, after 2005, the annual consumption of aluminum alloy conductor in China will be 40-50,000 tons. However, at present, the annual consumption of aluminum alloy conductor in China will be about 40-50,000 tons. China's factories producing high strength aluminum alloys have only an annual production capacity of 20,000 tons, so the gap is about 20-30,000 tons.