(Yicai Global) April 10 -- State-owned China Southern Power Grid plans to invest CNY25.1 billion (USD3.6 billion) over the next four years to acquire and build charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.

The Guangzhou-based firm, which supplies electricity to 254 million citizens in southern China, will conduct mergers and acquisitions to obtain and construct 150 charging stations and 380,000 piles, it said in a statement today.

"The company will intensively position concentrated charging stations in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Hainan Pilot Free Trade Zone, and major cities in Guangxi, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in the near future to achieve the full coverage of quick charging networks in the inter-city highways connecting five provinces in South China", said the executive in charge of China Southern Power Grid's emerging sector business.

There will be over 64 million new-energy vehicles on Chinese roads by 2030, according to analysts at Beijing-based Saidi Consulting, which believes there will need to be a 1:1 ratio of piles to cars across the country. That means constructing another 63 million piles in a market that Saidi expects to be worth CNY1 trillion (USD142 billion).

China Southern Power had already invested CNY3.2 billion on the construction of 31,600 charging piles as of December, which had provided 450 million kilowatt-hours of energy by then. It invested CNY16 million in charging infrastructure in the first quarter, when it opened five charging stations and switched on 86 charging piles. It plans to invest CNY120 million in charging infrastructure throughout this year.

Editor: James Boynton