China's maximum power load hits record high on soaring temperatures

China's maximum power load hit a record 1.22 billion kilowatts on Tuesday, the state planner said on Thursday, after temperatures soared this week.

Several cities broke new records for high temperatures on Tuesday as scorching heat and contrasting relentless rains wreaked havoc, with forecasters expecting weather extremes to linger for days. 

Power generation reached 27.854 billion kilowatt hours on the same day, Li Yunqing, director of the Operation Bureau at the National Development and Reform Commission told a news briefing.

The planner is making every effort to ensure energy supply during the summer peak demand period, he added, and so far it has been stable.

Overall power demand from China is forecast to grow much more slowly in 2022 than normal years, due to lockdowns and restrictions on movement during Covid-19 outbreaks.

A surge in hydropower output in China this year, boosted by record-breaking rainfall, is also helping the world's biggest power user avert power shortages and reduce coal consumption. 

Last year, lower domestic coal production and a drop in hydropower generation led to a weeks-long power crunch that hit manufacturing across the world's number 2 economy.

Li said the state planner was urging coal regions to increase production where possible and power plants currently had 170 million tonnes of coal in storage, an increase of nearly 60 million tonnes over the same period last year, enough for 26 days' use.

The scale of unplanned outages and output obstructions of coal power generation has dropped to the lowest level in many years, and the peak output of gas power generation has increased significantly, he said.