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China imports electricity from Russia
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-05-05 14:13
Heihe City of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province has started importing
electricity from the Far East area of Russia recently, to meet the increasing
demand for power in the local raw materials industries.
This was the first time that China has imported electricity from Russia.
The city would import 15.4 billion kilowatt hours of electricity from
Amurskaya of Russia in the next 10 years, to develop local industrial silicon,
silicon carbide, graphite electrode, electrolytic copper and other high
energy-consuming raw materials industries, said Su Zhenping, head of the
management committee of the Heihe City Economic Cooperation Zone.
A total of 400 million kilowatt hours of electricity will be imported this
year, and the import is expected to reach 500 million kilowatt hours in 2005,
one billion and 1.5 billion kilowatt hours in 2006 and 2007 respectively. By
2008, the annual import will reach 2 billion kilowatt hours, according to a
bilateral agreement signed in August last year. The agreement expires in 2013.
Su said the Russian side was active in electricity export and promised to
initially charge 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. With the expansion of electricity
import, the charge is expected to drop gradually.
Materials provided by the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Sciences show
that currently Russia generates over 1 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity
annually and most of its power stations are located in Siberia and the Far East
areas, where output of electricity far exceeds demands.
With fast economic growth, especially that of the energy-consuming
industries, in recent years, China's power consumption has increased rapidly,
causing serious electricity shortages in the country. As a result, 21 provinces
enforced blackouts in 2003 to prevent the grid from crashing.
Song Kui, a research fellow with the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of
Sciences, said that importing electricity from neighboring countries was
expected to be an effective way to solve the power crisis in China and was
conducive to the development of both countries.
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