Pomegranates Bring a Good Life

Deep in the hills of Zaozhuang, a southern city in Shandong Province, China, nestles the Guanshi Pomegranate Orchard, which covers an area of more than 100,000 mu (6,666 hectares). The pomegranate cultivation history in Zaozhuang can be traced back to the Han Dynasty over two millennia ago, when Kuang Heng, who once chiseled a hole in his neighbor’s wall to borrow light for study and later rose to a prime minister, brought a small pomegranate seed from the royal Shanglin Park to his birthplace – Zaozhuang. It is this small seed that makes Zaozhuang the land of pomegranates in China today. Now, every year during the pomegranate harvest season, the front and back yards of every household in Liuyuan Town, Yicheng District, Zaozhuang City are dotted with leafy pomegranate trees laden with fruit. The ripe pomegranates, which mingle with the city lights like festive red lanterns hanging all over the city, bear the Chinese people’s longing for solidarity, harmony, auspiciousness and happiness.

Power supply underpins economic development and industrial upgrading. Over the years, the Zaozhuang government has insisted on providing the “Shandong paradigm”for rural vitalization through the development of the pomegranate industry. On the road to the prosperous development of the pomegranate industry, State Grid Zaozhuang Electric Power Supply Company ( “State Grid Zaozhuang” for short) not only acts as a electricity provider but also a key facilitator for the rural vitalization and local prosperity. Through grid reinforcement and power data analysis of the industrial chain, State Grid Zaozhuang constantly provides powerful support for the development of the pomegranate industry and unlocks endless opportunities for industrial transformation and upgrading.

Strong Power Grid Brings Prosperous Life

The Guanshi Pomegranate Orchard stretches for dozens of miles across the sunny hills of Yicheng District, where some forty or ffty natural villages are scattered. Every autumn, Sun Zhongtan, a pomegranate farmer from the Xiaozhuang Village, who is over 60 years old, would spend three months in his pomegranate hut. At this time of the year, the 10,000-mu secluded pomegranate orchard would be fooded with long queues of trucks waiting to procure pomegranates, as well as groups of pickers strolling through the orchard to enjoy the scenery, who sometimes take a tour and a nap in Sun’s farmhouse. Stepping inside the hut, what comes into view are electric lights, a kettle, a fridge, air conditioning and all the modern conveniences. Outside the window are plump, ruby-red pomegranates weighing down the branches. Pickers shot videos of the scenery here and posted them on the internet, exclaiming that this was exactly the rural life they had always dreamed of. The videos soon went viral, making the plain old pomegranate farmer famous and turning the little hut into a hot spot. “Everybody reckons that a ranger’s life is hard, but I feel at home and ease here,” said Sun Zhongtan, “What lies behind our cozy life is the electricity. Without electricity, the pomegranate industry wouldn’t fourish.”

Over the years, State Grid Zaozhuang continuously optimizes the development plan of the Guanshi Pomegranate Orchard, as well as the ongoing large-scale transformation and upgrading of its power grid. In the past fve years, 51.63 kilometers of 10 kV power supply lines and 98.56 kilometers of low-voltage power lines have been renovated, and 66 distribution stations have been upgraded. Currently, there are 103 transformers, 220.7-kilometer low-voltage power lines and 4 49-kilometer power lines within the Guanshi Pomegranate Orchard. The power lines extend horizontally and vertically, covering the nooks and crannies of the orchard.

Ever since Sun could remember, the watering entailed all hands on deck in the past. As most of the trails in the hills were narrow and winding, the whole family, young and old, had to carry buckets of water on their shoulders up and down the hills. Nowadays, meter boxes are installed right in the feld with a distance of 50 meters at most. “Since the electricity is supplied to the feld, everything becomes convenient.” Sun has done the maths, “Watering (at least twice) and pesticide application (no less than ten times) are both done electrically with 2kW or 3kW motors. Plus the lighting for tending and sales, the annual electricity bill is no more than RMB 500 or RMB 600. In addition, if there is any problem with the electricity, the workers from the electricity company will come straight away, which is reassuring!”

The availability of sufcient electricity has disrupted the traditional living patterns of pomegranate farmers, who used to live at the mercy of the weather. Now the villagers no longer need to go out to work or process the produce. All they need to do is to water, spray pesticides, fertilize, prune, tend, and sell as the seasons change, and then, with the stable grid-based electricity supply, each household can earn a steady proft of RMB 30,000 to 40,000 per capita per year.

Of course, the benefciaries of the grid-based electricity supply are not just growers, but also many other villagers working in related sectors.

Yan Hui, a villager born and raised in Dongbailou Village, registered the “Pomegranate Flower Girl” trademark and intended to make money by processing pomegranate pancakes. However, keeping pomegranates fresh is no easy feat. The traditional method of storing them in cellars can only keep them until the Spring Festival, and there are a lot of rots. Later, State Grid Zaozhuang built the 10kV Bailou branch line of the Wangzhuang line here, and the problem was readily solved. By increasing the electricity capacity, Yan took the lead in introducing the “home pomegranate fresh-keeping storage”, and setting up a pomegranate pancake processing factory equipped with high-powered processing and production machines. With complete refrigeration and production facilities, her pomegranate pancakes sell well near and far, with the highest price reaching RMB 16 per kilogram, setting a new record for the top price of pancakes in Shandong.

As one of the key tourist villages in Shandong Province, Wangfushan Village has seen a growing demand for electricity over the years where its fower viewing spots are adjacent to roasted tea shops, root carving shops to bonsai shops, and local farmers’ restaurants to pomegranate growers’ guesthouses. In 2020, State Grid Zaozhuang laid 400 meters of low-voltage cables under the main roads in the village, realizing the direct supply of dynamic electricity to households. Sun Qihai is a tea merchant in the village who has mastered the art of roasting pomegranate leaf tea in his youth. In the past, he could only roast about 50 kilograms of tea a year at most since roasting tea with frewood was time-consuming. With the supply of dynamic electricity to households, Sun’s shop has increased its output by more than ten times and its annual revenue by more than RMB 100,000 in recent years, becoming one of the hottest local specialty product sellers in the village.

The robust power grid has unleashed the demand of local villagers for electricity for production and living. In 2023, the electricity consumption of Liuyuan Town reached 191 GWh, its growth rate leading the region.

Beneath the fery red pomegranate trees that cover the hills, high-quality electricity is quietly shuttling to every corner, bringing not only endless revitalization opportunities to the villages but also a prosperous life to the local residents.

Green Electricity Connects the Circular Pomegranate Industrial Chain

The contribution of the villagers to the industrial development of Zaozhuang City is undoubtedly remarkable, as they provide not only a rich variety of agricultural products for the market but also traditional handicrafts and special services that enrich the local cultural connotation and boost the resilience of the rural economy. However, the fragmented business model doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with the demand for the modernized, large-scale and efcient development of local industries as a whole. To promote the large-scale transformation, upgrading, and sustainable development of the pomegranate industry in Zaozhuang, it is imperative to establish a seamless circular industrial chain.

In 2021, focusing on building the pomegranate industrial chain, the Zaozhuang government vigorously attracted investment for projects such as pomegranate deep processing and by-product processing. In the same year, in order to promote the development of the local pomegranate industry cluster, the local government, in cooperation with Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings, invested a total of RMB 2 billion in building the Wanglaoji Pomegranate One Health Industrial Park, an innovation and development base for China’s pomegranate industry.

Upon the launch of the industrial park project, State Grid Zaozhuang diagnosed the distribution network structure around the industrial park in advance before extending the 10 kV power lines to surround the entire industrial park. This realized the standardized construction of power supply and distribution facilities in the industrial park, and satisfed the demand of enterprises within the industrial park for independent installation of power facilities. To make it easier for enterprises to apply for electricity supply online, State Grid Zaozhuang has also innovatively offered the “electricity e-helper” service for cloud inspection and acceptance, shortening the lead time to 4 working days and offering “turn-key solutions” for enterprises at “Zaozhuang’s speed”.

Walking into the current industrial park, visitors can see a spectrum of pomegranate products such as pomegranate wine, pomegranate tea, pomegranate and ginseng beverages displayed in the showcase of the exhibition hall. In the production workshop, bottles of well-flled beverages are circulating quickly along the intelligent production line. “The production line hasn’t stopped since the Spring Festival. We can produce about 100 tons of products every day, sufcient to supply all eastern China regions!” said the production workers proudly. Behind them, rows of trucks were waiting outside the factory to load and transport cartons of pomegranate beverages to Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and other regions.

To bolster the long-term competitiveness of the industrial park, State Grid Zaozhuang has also successively helped many recruited enterprises with electricity substitution. Since 2023, with the help of State Grid Zaozhuang, the industrial park has replaced a total of 9.0786 GWh of electricity and cut the electricity cost for enterprises by RMB 6.8997 million. Workers could often see State Grid’s power maintenance personnel in blue helmets and red vests in and out of the industrial park, whose meticulous inspection and timely and effective repair each time are the strongest defense line for the stable operation of the industrial park.

The expansion of the pomegranate industry and the increase in gross electricity consumption have presented State Grid Zaozhuan with another challenge: how to reduce the environmental impact of traditional power generation while ensuring the rapid development of the pomegranate industry. State Grid Zaozhuang’s answer is clever: make green electricity a part of the local pomegranate industrial chain to form a closed loop for sustainable development.

During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, State Grid Zaozhuang successively invested RMB 22.61 million in the grid connection project. It assisted the“Light of Yicheng” PV project, a photovoltaic project located at the subsidence area in the vicinity of the Guanshi Pomegranate Orchard, in connecting to power grids. The distributed PV systems of 78 local pomegranate companies and 1,505 growers were connected to power grids, providing a steady stream of clean energy for the pomegranate industrial chain. Additionally, the photovoltaic companies would take out a portion of the project revenue to pay land rent to the villagers. After receiving the money, the upstream growers can expand their pomegranate plantations and provide more raw materials for the processing companies.

The branches and peels of pomegranates discarded after harvesting and processing are a type of biomass. These wastes, which otherwise would have been thrown away, are transported to local power generation plants that use biomass straw as fuel. A biomass power plant with two 25-MW biomass power generators can consume approximately 600,000 tons of pomegranate waste and generate 360 GWh of electricity annually, which is transmitted to other users across the industrial chain in a safe, stable and efcient manner through the robust power grids of State Grid Zaozhuang. Moreover, the ash residue from the burning of biomass fuel can also be returned to the Guanshi Pomegranate Orchard as organic fertilizer, providing sufcient nutrients for next year’s bumper harvest.

In this way, pomegranate growers, processors, energy providers and other stakeholders throughout the chain are connected in series by silver cables, forming a tightly knit and mutually benefcial “green ecosystem”. This not only achieves the deep integration within the industry, but also lays a solid foundation for Zaozhuang’s green development.

Electricity Data Outlines the Big Picture of Pomegranate Industry Development

In 2024, the General Ofce of the People’s Government of Shandong Province issued the Opinions on Supporting the High-Quality Development of the Pomegranate Industry in Zaozhuang, proposing to strengthen policy support, tech empowerment, and factor guarantee to promote the high-quality development of the pomegranate industry with full steam. To improve the quality of industrial development, it is necessary to gain accurate, fast and efcient insights into the local business status and development trends of the sector. However, the pomegranate industry consists of the upstream, midstream and downstream industrial chain, ranging from the planting, processing, logistics, and sales to other links. Conducting collaborative analysis across such a long industrial chain would be a massive challenge. The key to addressing the problem lies in the electricity company that connects the entire industrial chain and the corresponding corporate electricity data. There’s a lot more that State Grid Zaozhuang can do, especially in today when the big data, data analysis and visualization are widely used.

To build a new model for monitoring the development of the pomegranate industry based on electricity data, State Grid Zaozhuang actively liaises with the competent departments of the municipal government and strengthens communication with the demand side. It has held seminars on rural vitalization with the Zaozhuang branch of China Unicom to clarify the data analysis demand for industrial development. It has actively visited pomegranate growers and pomegranate processing companies to grasp the problems and pain points of the current sector and industrial chain. It has also visited the Zaozhuang Big Data Center for business exchanges to learn about the government’s requirements for corporate analysis and monitoring.

With the support of all parties, the in-depth research and integration of the pomegranate industry are quietly underway. Employees of State Grid Zaozhuang have traveled the length and breadth of Zaozhuang City and fnally teased out 645 pomegranate industry users. These users are like fruit trees in the pomegranate orchard, waiting to be carefully tended and nurtured. As the electrical grower of the “pomegranate users”, State Grid Zaozhuang needs to carefully monitor the growth of the “fruit trees”, identify and address problems such as diseases and insects in a timely manner, and prune the branches, fertilize, and water the “fruit trees” to ensure their continued healthy growth.

To gain deeper insights into these hundreds of users, State Grid Zaozhuang has utilized the label management function in the business system to break down the industrial chain into the upstream (breeding, planting and irrigation), midstream (processing and sales, pomegranate bonsai and cold storage), and downstream sectors (tourism, catering and accommodation). On this basis, State Grid Zaozhuang has conducted an all-round, multi-angle and three-dimensional analysis of the pomegranate industry from the spheres such as user classifcation, industry categories, voltage level, and electricity consumption modes to help the local government “pinpoint the key points, promote advantageous chains and support weak industries”.

In addition to providing data analysis and policy suggestions in a macro sense, State Grid Zaozhuang, based on electricity data, seeks to save money for users in a fancy way from three perspectives – offering affordable electricity bills, discounted electricity prices, and PV benefts. For high-voltage customers of the industry, the account managers of State Grid Zaozhuang offer regular door-to-door guidance to help them optimize reactive compensation and balance electricity load. Besides, more favorable electricity pricing and billing plans are automatically recommended to customers who choose personalized services, helping them save costs. For the 1,632 PV stations in Liuyuan Town, State Grid Zaozhuang has set up daily monitoring of households with zero PV generation and customers with abnormal electric power to ensure the normal operation of the PV stations and to continuously increase the “PV income” of the pomegranate farmers.

With the multi-pronged assistance of State Grid Zaozhuang, the pomegranate industry in Zaozhuang has shown unprecedented vitality, just like the lush and vibrant pomegranate orchard. As of 2023, the planting scale of pomegranates in Zaozhuang City has been spectacular, with the city’s pomegranate plantation area expanding to 120,000 mu (8,000 hectares), the number of plants exceeding 6 million, the annual output exceeding 60 million kilograms, and the annual output value of the city’s entire pomegranate industrial chain reaching nearly RMB 4 billion. What’s behind the remarkable statistics are the hard work and intellectual contributions of many electricity workers. Looking ahead, State Grid Zaozhuang will continue to embrace the tenet of “a power utility by the people and for the people”. It will promote the “red pomegranates” with “State Grid’s green electricity”, striving to make Zaozhuang’s pomegranates shine the brightest in Shandong.