Wednesday July 06, 2005

Shanghai facing summer blackouts

xinhuanet.com :

Residents in Shanghai, China's economic power house, have spent continuously ten scorching summer days with temperature hitting 38 centigrade, together with the record summer electricity consumption.

Officials with the power department said that at 12:50 a.m. Monday, the electricity consumption peak has reached the record 16.4 million kilowatt, almost the highest bearing capacity of Shanghai power grid. All generating units are in full operation. Power grids outside Shanghai have supplied maximum of 4.83 million kilowatt of electricity to Shanghai ...

bloomberg.com :

Shanghai's government, moving to avert summer blackouts that forced thousands of companies to slash production last year, asked factory owners to plan shutdowns and may also raise power prices. China's biggest commercial city may have 2 million kilowatts less power than it needs this summer as the use of air conditioners pushes demand beyond generating capacity ...

Power transmission lines are running at full capacity and below international standards that call for the grid system to have 20 percent of spare loading to ensure safe and stable delivery, Shi [Yubo, vice chairman of the State Electricity Regulatory Commission] said. Electricity consumption may rise 12 percent this year to 2.42 billion megawatt-hours, he said.

Chinese power generators may add 15 percent more generation capacity this year to meet rising demand, with total installed capacity increasing to 505,000 megawatts from 440,000 megawatts in 2004, he said.

- For comparison, Singapore uses up somewhere between 4,000 to 5,000 megawatts. As for sheer scale, China uses a thousand times more electricity. But on the other hand, if you do a comparison on a per-capita basis, Singaporeans chew up over 1000W per person at any given instant (roughly equivalent to running a family-sized microwave oven at full power ALL the time), while the Chinese are at about 300W per person - which is something like a couple of CRT TV's. Well. Singaporeans are energy hogs. The residents of other so-called "developed" countries should be more or less equally guilty of that as well.

(2005-07-06 13:02:01 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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