Record heat in China strains power grid, stirs health fears
BEIJING (Reuters) -China warned on Wednesday against the risk of power supply disruptions as people struggled to keep cool in record heat baking large swathes of the country, which also spurred warnings to the elderly to guard against heat stroke.
Power demand exceeded 1.5 billion kilowatts for the first time last week, energy officials said, the third successive record for China this month, when its first nationwide alert on heat-related health risks also went out.
"High-temperature weather will ... have an impact on power generation and supply," weather official Chen Hui told a press conference on Wednesday, adding that it would hit hydropower output and reduce the efficiency of photovoltaic generation.
Authorities will send alerts to notify electricity suppliers if measures such as peak shaving and cross-regional dispatching of power are called for, added Chen, an official of the China Meteorological Administration.
Over the weekend, China announced that construction had begun on what will be the world's largest hydropower dam in Tibet, at an estimated cost of at least $170 billion, cheering investors but vexing downstream neighbours India and Bangladesh.
The project is expected to produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, equal to the amount of electricity consumed by Britain last year, as Beijing seeks to meet the country's growing power demand.
Since mid-March, the number of days when temperatures hit 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) or more is the highest on record, said Jia Xiaolong, deputy director of the National Climate Centre.
Authorities asked the elderly to stay indoors unless necessary, while urging outdoor workers to scale down activity on such "sauna days".
Temperatures have hit new highs since mid-March in the central provinces of Henan and Hubei, Shandong in the east, Sichuan in the southwest, and northwestern Shaanxi and Xinjiang, pushing the national average to the second highest on record.
During the last two weeks, above 40 degrees C (104 F) heat enveloped 407,000 square kilometres of the country, Jia said. That is more than the land area of Germany or Japan.
In the same period, roughly one in 10 national weather observatories tracked temperatures above 40C with one in Xinjiang reaching 48.7C.
Jia did not rule out the chance of more record-breaking heat, saying August could prove as warm as, or even hotter than, in recent years.
(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen and Liz Lee; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Clarence Fernandez and Kim Coghill)
© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025.
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