China wants daily power updates amid shortage woes

BEIJING, July 9 (Reuters) - China on Wednesday asked grid operators and power generators to report daily on their operations and would issue warnings when power shortages rose to certain levels or when coal stocks fell below some thresholds.

The move came as China was forecast by industry officials and analysts as facing its worst power shortages since 2004, mainly due to insufficient coal supplies. [ID:nPEK37105]

Low coal stocks, rising costs, falling water levels, hotter weather and May's deadly earthquake all indicate more severe shortages are in order.

Coal-rich Shanxi had already been hit by record power shortfalls of nearly 5 GW, or a third of demand, in late June and the deficit is expected to expand further in coming months due to insufficient coal supply to power plants. [ID:nPEK14868]

The State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) said on its website (www.serc.gov.cn) that it would issue monitoring reports of the power industry twice a week to relevant government departments and power firms, as well as disclose more information frequently when national power demand and supply and coal stocks reached "warning levels".

The "warning levels" refer to the number of provincial grids rationing power exceeding 10, national power rationing exceeding 10 gigawatts, or average coal stocks in power plants with capacity of at least 100 megawatts each falling below the level for nine days' of generation.

It will also announce an emergency when the number of provinces with coal stocks below seven days' use exceeds 10, when there is a sharp fall of over 20 percent in coal supply and that is unable to recover subsequently in any province, and when capacity of coal-fired generators being shut down due to coal shortages exceeds 5 percent of on-grid power flows. (Reporting by Jim Bai; Editing by Ben Tan)