China’s Power Demand Hits New High in July

BRISBANE, Australia - Aug. 29, 2013 - PRLog -- On a year-on-year basis, the figure also climbed 8.8%, with the growth rate accelerating from June’s 6.3%, and from 4.5% in July 2012.

Industrial consumption accounted for 360.9bn kWh, or 11.64bn kWh in July, rising 7% from 10.9bn kWh/day in June, and marking a rise for the fifth month in a row.

The figure also jumped 8.1% from the same month of last year, with the growth rate increasing from June’s 5.69%, and from just 3% in July 2012.

Consumption by the service sector reached 58.6bn kWh, growing 17.7% from the previous month, while residential use stood at 58.5bnkWh, an increase of 24.5% month-on-month.

The figures also climbed 13.4% and 12.3% respectively year-on-year, versus the growth rates of 10.53% and 9.32% in June.

Power consumed by the agricultural sector accounted for 11.3bn kWh, climbing 14.1% from June, although this was down 5.5% year-on-year.

Overall power consumption in the first seven months amounted to 2.99 trillion kWh, an increase of 5.7% from the same period last year. The rate of increase has expanded from 5.14% in H1, and from 5.4% between January-July 2012.

This was at a time when industrial consumption rose 5.3% to 2.17 trillion kWh in the first seven months, with the growth rate up from 4.82% in H1, and from 3.5% in the same period of last year.

The service sectors consumed 350.9bn kWh, up 9.9%, while residential use was up 5.1% to 374.1bn kWh. This is compared to growth rates of 9.26% and 3.89% in H1.

However, consumption by the agricultural sector fell 1.7% to 57.4bn kWh.

The NEA also indicated that thermal power production was much stronger in July, with the average operating hours of thermal units hitting around 444, rising sharply from 387 in the previous month.  However, hydro performance dipped to 351 hours in July from 385 in June.

The average operating hours of domestic power units were 2,591 in the first seven months of this year, decreasing 65 hours year-on-year. The figure for hydro units fell by 17 to 1,883 hours, marking the first decline this year, while performance for thermal units was down 67 to 2,856 hours.

New unit launches in the seven-month period were 39.33GW, bringing total capacity for units above 6MW to 1,147.72GW at end-July, up 9.3%.

Some 12.67GW of new hydro units were put into operation in the period, sharply up from 6GW in the same period of last year. However, new thermal units stood at just 17.51GW, versus 17.9GW between January-July 2012.

The coal burn level averaged 321g/kWh of coal equivalent in the period, down 4g/kWh year-on-year.

This also comes amid a slide in spending on building thermal units, to RMB44.2bn ($7.16bn) in the first seven months of this year, decreasing 7.9% year-on-year.

By contrast, hydro expenditures rose 19.6% to RMB74.9bn ($12.1bn). This has put overall spending at RMB194.7bn ($31.55bn), up 13.9%.

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