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Chinese High voltages lines deliver juice less and less often this summer. (Getty Images)
Nearly 50 million people in Guangxi Province are suffering the worst electricity shortage seen in two decades. Businesses have closed and the people swelter in the summer heat.
The Guangxi Power Grid Corporation held a press conference and said that, “the electricity shortage this year is much worse than predicted and it now accounts for 30 percent of the total demand,” China Economic Times reported on Aug. 2. The Corporation has issued an electricity shortage red alert.
The power company’s vice chief engineer said that the current shortage is between 3.5 to 4 gigawatts.
Currently, the Guangxi power plants’ coal supply is extremely low and the total coal stock in the entire region is only 1.22 million tons, which is roughly 13 days’ worth of production. Some power plants have already shut down due to lack of coal.
The electricity shortage has caused more than 1,000 factories and businesses to completely or partially shut down. The street lighting in provincial capital Nanning has been reduced by half to conserve electricity.
Mr. Bai from Qingzhou Township sums up the situation: “Sometimes the power goes out from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.; sometimes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The electricity was cut to both residents and factories. Blackouts are much more frequent this year.”
Mr. Chen from Liuzhou said, “These rolling blackouts have continued for two months. The situation is a little better in the city.”
An electrical appliance business owner named Mr. Ding has also been affected. “My hometown is in a rural area, there are more frequent blackouts and they rotate between the different districts. This situation has lasted at least half a month.”
Mr. Ding elaborated: “About two months ago, I found that the electricity rate had gone up; the business rate went from 18.6 cents per kwh to 23.3 cents, but the residential rate stayed the same. Guangxi relies on coal for power generation, but there is a shortage of coal.”
“There are a few large hydro-power plants in Guangxi, but power generation depends on the water level, when it rains a lot, there are fewer blackouts. There has been very little rain this summer in Guangxi,” said Ding.
Regarding the cause of the electricity shortage, Xinhua reported on July 31 that hydro generation in Guangxi averaged around 2.5 gigawatts this year, which is half of last year’s number. The water levels at three nearby hydroelectric stations are close to the zero production level. At the same time, the lack of coal caused a one gigawatt reduction in power generation and the unusable coal quality also caused another gigawatt reduction. In addition, the increased air conditioning usage due to the high temperatures has raised the usual demand by 4 gigawatts.
On July 29, the China Electricity Council (CEC) released the country’s electricity supply and demand analysis and forecast report. The country’s total electricity shortage during the second half of this year is expected to reach 30 gigawatts.
The report showed that, since 2003, coal prices in China have continuously increased. The price of high-quality coal increased from US$42.6 per ton in 2003 to US$130.5 in June of 2011, an accumulated increase of over 200 percent, but the electricity price has only gone up by 40 percent. This has led to heavy losses for coal power plants; the coal-fired power plants of the five major electricity corporations suffered combined losses of $2.4 billion.
An article published on Aug. 1 by the magazine Energy Review said that around 10 provinces now suffer from power shortages.
The article summarized three reasons for this year’s frequent power shortages: 1) The electricity rates rise more slowly than the cost of coal and oil, so that the current business electricity rate is only 70 percent of the international average, while the residential rate is only 40 percent of the world average; 2) There is no systematic allocation of resources, causing an unbalanced distribution in power generation; 3) Due to costs pressures from raw materials, Chinese electricity generators report very weak earnings and lack the financial resources needed to continue operating.Read the original Chinese article.
