Electric power in Nanjing City will be boosted under a new government programme aiming to meet the city's surging needs by 2015.

Electric power generators should eventually have a capacity of 10.71 million kilowatts.

By 2007, there will be a power supply demand of 5.5 million-5.7 million kilowatts - and by 2015 the figures will almost double.

Two-stage plan

Based on this estimate, the local government has proposed a two-stage plan to develop its electric power industry.

The first will set a target of 4 million kilowatts to be supplied by the city's own power plants.

When this target is reached, the city will be able to supply most of the electric power on its own, and the rest will be supplied by power stations outside Nanjing.

In the second stage, from 2008 to 2015, huge power plants each with a generating capacity of more than 1 million kilowatts will be built, and power generators with a total capacity of about 8 million kilowatts will be installed.

The city will be able to supply all its own needs then.

Nanjing, an important industrial city in East China and the capital of Jiangsu Province, has suffered from power shortages in recent years.

Power stations

There are 16 power stations in the city, but only two of them have a capacity of more than 300,000 kilowatts. The total capacity of their generators is 2.19 million kilowatts.

In 2003, the biggest power supply demand in Nanjing was 3.42 million kilowatts, but the city's own power plants could only supply 58.3 per cent of it, and the gap was filled by power plants outside the city.

Last year, the city suffered a shortage of 1.22 million kilowatts. In many office buildings, people could not turn on air conditioners in summer or in winter.

The situation has continued in the new year.

In Fuxin Mansion, a 38-storey office building in downtown Nanjing, workers now have to cope with temperatures only several degrees above zero because there is insufficient energy to power heaters.

(China Daily January 17, 2005)