Power consumption recovers in East China province

NANJING - Electricity consumption in East China's economic powerhouse Jiangsu province grew 8.4 percent year-on-year to 54.37 billion kWh in November as the economy continues to rebound from the COVID-19 epidemic.

The robust increase, the fastest for November over the past five years, helped power consumption return to growth for the January-November period, edging up by 0.25 percent year-on-year, according to the State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power Co Ltd.

Early this year, the slump in new orders and disruption to the supply chain caused by the COVID-19 epidemic hit the manufacturing sector in Jiangsu hard and led to a slump in industrial power consumption.

After the epidemic was contained across the country, companies in Jiangsu started resuming business in April and industrial power consumption has continued to recover ever since.

The return to growth territory indicates that the core real economy in the province has basically overcome the impact of the epidemic and even surpassed the levels from the same period of last year, said Li Hu, a researcher with the State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power Co Ltd.

In November, power consumption for the industrial sector grew 8.7 percent year-on-year to 41.6 billion kWh. This was mainly due to growth in new orders and production capacity, Li said.

Power use by the wind power equipment, new energy vehicles and photovoltaic equipment sectors surged 125-fold, 54.6 percent and 186.7 percent, respectively.