With summer coming, China, still experiencing an acute tension between electricity supply and demand, is facing a serious power production safety situation, said sources with the State Electricity Regulatory Commission ( SERC), China's electricity watchdog on Thursday.

Chai Songyue, chairman of the SERC said at the third conference of the state commission for electric power production safety that China must take effective measures to ensure electric power production safety, to prevent large scope power-outages and to increase its response ability to such accidents.

According to Chai, in the first five months of 2005, China saw a power consumption of 932.5 billion kWh, 13.61 percent more over the same period of last year.

It is estimated that the total power consumption of the country in 2005 will reach 2422 billion kWh, 12 percent more than last year, he said.

Chai said that with the summer peak time for power consumption coming, there exists many hidden perils for China's electric power production.

According to Chai, one of the major threats to the safety of power generation is the failure for some enterprises to fulfill their commitment of effective safety management and supervision.

Furthermore, in the acute tension between electricity supply and demand, the electrical generation and transmission equipment has been running with excess load. And as the acute coal shortage situation is still haunting the normal operation of coal-fired power generation and frequent natural disasters are still a major threaten for electrical grid, China has to endeavor to combat all those adverse factors to ensure production safety, Chai said.

Last month's Moscow-area power outage which caused a financial loss of at least one billion US dollars has aroused great attention from China's high-level officials. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Vice Premier Huang Ju and Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan have all required to enhance the power safety supervision and administration of the country, and to put the response project for large-scope power outages issued on May 24 by the State Council into effect as soon as possible.

Chai said that the issuance of the project marks the establishment of China's electricity emergency response system.

It will be of great significance for China to combat such electrical accidents as large-scope blackouts, he said.

Chai said that while enhancing prevention ability by maintaining the safety and stability of the electric system, China must establish it own response system for electric emergency accidents.

Electrical enterprises should establish a rapid and effective response system to put the accident under control at the first time and to prevent the expansion effect of the accident. All related institutions should establish a coordinating system so that they can effectively put the aftermath under control and to reduce the losses as much as possible, Chai said.

Shi Yubo, vice chairman of the SERC, said that, according to the project, the SERC is planning to set up an emergency leading group to direct emergency handling of large-scope power-outages. All electric grid and power generation enterprises should establish their own emergency headquarters to meet emergencies occurring in their own enterprises.

Source: Xinhua