China

Immediately after the devastating earthquake struck China on May 12, the country's State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) activated their highest emergency response systems to respond to the disaster. SERC assured everyone affected that they, and many other Chinese relief agencies, would employ maximum efforts to restore power disrupted by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit China's Sichuan Province. The earthquake severely damaged power facilities in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi Provinces. SERC reported that the massive earthquake, whose epicentre was in Wenchuan County, about 100km from the provincial capital Chengdu, disrupted electricity supply in China's central and north-western regions. They said that it was too soon to gauge how seriously the grid has been damaged, but the fact that SERC President Wang Xudong activated a Class One emergency response, the highest of five levels, signified the gravity of the situation. In order to secure power supply, SERC also ordered hydropower plants to monitor dams in quake-hit areas and keep close touch with local governments and flood-control command agencies. Officials at China Huadian Corporation, a centrally-administered power generator, said it had lost contact with its enterprise in the epicentre, although operations in other quake-ravaged regions had resumed shortly after the disaster. Another of the region's major power generators, China Guodian Corporation, reported only temporary interruptions in operations in Sichuan and that a small number of workers injured by stones rolling from a construction site in Daganshan were hospitalized. The company said its hydropower plants in Gongzui and Nanyahe River Valley in Sichuan were operating normally despite strong tremors on the Monday afternoon after the quake. The State Grid Corporation of China, the country's largest power transmission company serving more than 1 billion people across almost 88 percent of China, reported that the quake had cut the electrical load in Sichuan by 4 million kilowatts, paralyzing one 500-kv power station and five 220-kv power stations. State Grid also said that power plants in western Sichuan including Jiangyou, Jintang, Baozhusi, Maoxian and Dazhou Dongyuan were cut off from the grid. In Shaanxi Province, the electrical load shrank by 1.5 million kilowatts immediately after the quake with two transformer sub-stations and three power generators malfunctioning or non-operational they said. But the trunk power grid was operating smoothly, and the situation had improved overnight, with the lost electrical load recovering, State Grid reported. To determine the damage to power facilities, a number of emergency response teams from State Grid made their way on foot to the worst-hit regions of Aba in Sichuan and Longan in Gansu, which had been cut off from telecommunications and transportation networks. The State Grid classified railways, telecommunications and hospitals as "crucial users" whose power supply must be secured along with that for residential use to facilities relief work and ease the suffering of the victims.