China's national electricity supply and demand becomes stable, as some localities which reported electricity outages, have resumed power supply, Chinese top economic planner said on Monday, pledging efforts to ensure electricity supply ahead of cold weather.
Cold weather, along with rapidly expanding industrial production, created a surge in electricity demand and led to intermittent blackouts in some areas of Central China's Hunan Province and East China's Jiangxi Province, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement on its website on Monday.
The commission said that efforts to regulate energy consumption and energy intensity as well as reduce use of coals resulted in blackouts in some areas in East China's Zhejiang Province.
Since December, the country's utilization of electricity has surged 11 percent year-on-year, 6 percentage points higher than the same period last year, according to the NDRC.
"With of the arrival of cold weather over the first 20 days of this month, the highest level of the country's daily electricity load exceeded the summer peak, while electricity generation approaches summer peak, which is rare," said the commission.
However, with measures to immediately handle the situation, Hunan has regained its power supply, Jiangxi hasn't tightened power supply since December 19 and unnecessary blackout measures in Zhejiang have been rectified, according to the NDRC.
The country's electricity supply and demand is now stable, it said.
In order to guarantee power supply for the cold weather, the NDRC said that it will urge power enterprises to increase supply as much as they can on the basis of safety, while also coordinating electricity, coal and transport companies to ensure electricity companies' reserve of coals remain at a reasonable level.
The NDRC asked local governments and enterprises to review their plans for "effective use of electricity," ensuring that people's livelihood will not be affected. .
It said will guide major coal producers to speed up the release of production capacity, and "do everything possible" to meet rising market demand, the commission said, noting that the country will "modestly" increase coal imports based on the supply and demand for power generation.
The commission said that it will offer the most support to Hunan and Jiangxi where supply of coals for generating electricity is relatively tight. Currently, both of the two provinces' reserve of coal remains at a level of 18-day supply, it said.
Amid rising demand for coals, the NDRC said that it will cooperate with the transport sector to step up shipping of coals from major coal-producing provinces including North China's Shanxi, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province and North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Currently, the country's daily coal loads through the railway system surpassed 80,000 cargos and Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway seeing 140 trains carrying coals each day, both historically high, according to industry data.
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