Customers shop for electric fans at a supermarket in Qingzhou, East China's Shandong Province on July 5, 2023. As the extreme heat occurs in many countries, Chinese firms accelerate the production of refrigeration equipment, not only to meet domestic demand, but also to export to other countries. Photo: VCG

Senior Chinese government officials have ramped up calls for the stability of power supplies, with key meetings and inspections being held, amid surging demand for electricity driven by the summer heat waves that have lasted for weeks.

Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang visited China Huaneng Group and State Grid Corp on Saturday and held meetings on how to do a better job in preparing for summer power consumption peaks, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Ding called for more attention to be paid to key provinces and leading industries when it comes to securing power supplies and preventing outages.

In addition to securing electricity supplies, industry participants are urged to stabilize power rates while accelerating electricity production. Construction of new generating capacity should be facilitated.

An executive meeting of the State Council, China's cabinet, chaired by Premier Li Qiang on Friday, stressed ensuring energy and power supplies in summer.

Since June, electricity loads in many regions of China have repeatedly set new records. For example, as of July 12, South China's Hainan Province's accumulative power dispatch load hit a record high for the seventh time this year.

China's total electricity consumption amounted to 775.1 billion kilowatt-hours in June, up 3.9 percent year-on-year, the National Energy Administration said on Thursday.

If there is a long-term and large-scale extreme climate event, this year's national maximum power load may increase by 100 million kilowatts compared with 2022, the China Electricity Council (CEC) noted.

In response to surging demand, power companies have ramped up supplies. Data from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission suggested that in the first half of this year, state-owned coal enterprises produced 560 million tons of coal, with an average daily output of 3.09 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 4.7 percent.

The CEC predicted that growth rate of China's power consumption in 2023 will hit 6 percent, and the national demand and supply will maintain a "tight balance."

Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Sunday that the great emphasis from the top and the ramped-up efforts of power plants means that the stable supply of power is certain to be fulfilled.

More than 80 percent of China's power companies are state-owned, which provides for effective coordination, the expert said.

Despite the extreme weather conditions that have pushed up power demand, preparation is in place, particularly in terms of coal inventories. Coal is the major source of power production, so overall power supply should be in stable and secure, Lin said.