Electricity shortfalls in Tianjin, an industrial city near Beijing, may reach 1.5 gigawatts this summer, or 13 percent of the expected maximum power load, local grid operator warned on Thursday.
Tianjin Electrical Power Corp, a unit of State Grid Corp of China (SGCC), the country's dominant power distributor, forecast the maximum power load in Tianjin of 11.4 GW to emerge in late July or early August.
With scarce coal and water resources, Tianjin needed to import more electricity from other regions of the country, Tianjin Electrical Power Corp said in the report on its website (www.tj.sgcc.com.cn).
SGCC planned to build an ultra-high-voltage (UHV) power line passing through Beijing, Tianjin and Jinan in Shandong province by 2012, which would be a key solution to Tianjin's power shortages, the report said.
SGCC has touted its success in UHV technology development and drummed up calls to build long-distance, large-capacity UHV lines in recent weeks amid escalating shortage warnings.
The country should reduce large-scale and long-distance transportation of coal and use UHV technology to better allocate energy resources, an editorial in a company newspaper said on May 24.
On the same day, the National Energy Administration gave approval for SGCC to begin an early-stage study of a UHV direct current line to send power from northwestern Xinjiang region to central Henan province.
But some industry officials objected to the UHV expansion, especially alternating current UHV lines, citing security, economic viability, competition and pollution concerns.
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