China's Chongqing starts to ration power

BEIJING, July 21 (Reuters) - Southwestern China's Chongqing city has joined more than a dozen Chinese provinces to ration power, as declining coal stocks have curbed electricity generation while hot weather has boosted demand, state media reported on Monday.

Coal stocks at eight major coal-fired plants fell by an average of 7,000 tonnes per day in the first half of July, leading to a reduction of power output by 14 million kilowatt hours in the first two weeks, the China Electric Power News said on its website (www.cpnn.com.cn).

These plants shipped in 477,200 tonnes of coal in the first two weeks this month and burned 582,900 tonnes during the same period.

Some of the plants were operating with coal stocks below critical levels, the report said. It did not detail how much coal these plants had on hand or how many days their stockpile could last.

In the meantime, the electricity load since early this month has surged by more than 1 gigawatt (GW) from June amid continuously hot weather. The local grid estimated that maximum summer power demand would exceed 7.8 GW, with shortages likely to top 1 GW.

More rationing and brownouts were inevitable if forecasts by the local meteorological bureau, for 50 sunny days in a row, turn out to be accurate, the report added.

(Reporting by Jim Bai; editing by Ken Wills)