Reuters reported that Central China Henan province will face up to 4.85 GW of electricity shortages during the peak summer demand season due to the lack of coal supplies in power plants and effective generating capacity.

According to the Electric Power of Henan a unit of the State Grid Corp of China the country dominant power distributor, the deficit would account for nearly 12% of expected maximum power load of 41 GW.

The SGCC unit said Henan has 48.81 GW of power generating capacity, but excluding unstable plants or that not in service because of operating losses, usable capacity totalled only 35.55 GW.

It warned based on past experience, the expected power deficit could widen and normal power use by some residents could be affected if coal supplies were even less than expected or poor coal quality forced shutdowns of generators, coupled with rising power use load.

Coal-fired power plants in Henan, the most populous region in China are expected to generate 66.2 billion kilowatt hours of power from June to August, burning 360,000 tonnes of coal each day or 33.1 million tonnes in total. The volume of daily coal arrivals in power plants currently was around 320,000 tonnes

The Electric Power of Henan was coordinating with various government departments to encourage generating firms to build up coal stocks aiming to store 4.5 million tonnes of coal before summer.

China has warned of possibly the worst summer power shortages in recent years this year, citing rising demand and insufficient generation and transmission capacity. But some analysts argued that undervalued electricity prices would be the key reason for possible shortages as generators made little gains in ramping up production.

(Sourced from Reuters)