Speaker 1: Let's move on now and talk about China's southwestern province
Speaker 1: of Sichuan, which has restored most power supplies for industries
Speaker 1: and businesses. This happened by Sunday at noon, according to
Speaker 1: State television. Joining us to discuss this Downmotile Bloomberg, Asia
Speaker 1: Energy Reporter with us in Beijing. So I thing starting
Speaker 1: to get a little bit better from when we spoke
Speaker 1: to you last week down because we're kind of seeing
Speaker 1: a little bit of cooler weather as well. Yeah, Juels,
Speaker 1: we're seeing a lot of a lot of relief from
Speaker 1: the weather gods. It started raining over the weekend in
Speaker 1: Sichuan and the weather has dropped precipitously. Air conditioning demand
Speaker 1: dropped from about twenty four gigawatts a week ago to
Speaker 1: about twelve gigawatts on Sunday, and hydropower generation, which is
Speaker 1: pretty low right now, has inched up a little bit
Speaker 1: as well. That means that there's a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a cushion for the power system. So the province
Speaker 1: was able to stop. It's you know, full cutoff of
Speaker 1: power industrial facilities. There are still some curbs and it
Speaker 1: hasn't been a power restored to factories, but it's a
Speaker 1: lot better than it was this time last week, and
Speaker 1: so cooler weather reducing air conditioning mind as well tell
Speaker 1: us that I guess the impact HEATA factories and what
Speaker 1: kind of restarting we're seeing. Well, we're seeing a Honda,
Speaker 1: for example, is looking to restart their power parts factory
Speaker 1: in the city. We're still waiting as companies kind of
Speaker 1: wake up to this news this morning for more releases
Speaker 1: on specifics as far as who's restarting a capacity, who's
Speaker 1: just sort of slowly ramping up production. Um, it's going
Speaker 1: to be interesting to see because, as you know, Sichuan
Speaker 1: is a major hub for a couple of industries, including
Speaker 1: e V batteries and solar panels, So people will be
Speaker 1: sort of carefully watching those industries to see how quickly
Speaker 1: they can ramp up production again and get the supply
Speaker 1: chain for their industries. Back on track, I mentioned that
Speaker 1: we are seeing a little bit of cooler weather. What
Speaker 1: what are we expecting. Is it going to be some
Speaker 1: like quite significant change in rain or what is actually expected? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean you never exactly know what the weather,
Speaker 1: but it is very very good in the forecast right now.
Speaker 1: So Sichuan has had the worst drought in more than
Speaker 1: sixty years since the beginning of July. But for the
Speaker 1: next couple of days, they're expecting rainfall to be about
Speaker 1: above average, so so hopefully a lot of water to
Speaker 1: soak back into these depleted reservoirs. And then we're also
Speaker 1: going to see cooler weather move across China into the
Speaker 1: eastern parts in the south parts of the country, which
Speaker 1: while they haven't had an extreme power such situation as
Speaker 1: sich one, they've also seen factories have to sort of
Speaker 1: shift shift their operations around to use power at off
Speaker 1: peak times because there wasn't enough power to go around.
Speaker 1: So that might start to ease a little bit as
Speaker 1: we get to the end of this week and next weekend,
Speaker 1: and then you know, hopefully now we'll be in September
Speaker 1: and we'll start to get cooler weather and we'll have
Speaker 1: a month or two of relief from that. What our
Speaker 1: authorities doing to try and ensure that this doesn't happen again.
Speaker 1: Is there any kind of preparation for looking at potentially
Speaker 1: other different resources and stockpiling too. Yeah, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of things that they're doing on a national level.
Speaker 1: What China has done this year is really increased coal
Speaker 1: production to and boost their coal inventories around the country
Speaker 1: to be able to have stockpiles here if if it's necessary.
Speaker 1: Sichuan and UH and its neighbor Union are sort of
Speaker 1: particularly unique provinces because they have historically been very reliant
Speaker 1: on hydro power. Sichuan it gets about of its power
Speaker 1: capacity from its big dams along the Once River and
Speaker 1: other parts UH, and so they were just really affected
Speaker 1: by this historic drought here. UM. But China is looking
Speaker 1: at a couple of specific measures to deal with the
Speaker 1: Sichuan issue. One is, you know, just sort of increasing
Speaker 1: power capacity generation UM. You know that means windmills and
Speaker 1: solar plants, but also probably coal and gas power plants
Speaker 1: to deal with with peaks. And the other is looking
Speaker 1: at increasing building of power lines to get more UM
Speaker 1: grid interconnectedness because you know, this whole time that Sichuan
Speaker 1: was shut off, there were other parts of the country
Speaker 1: that had plenty of excess power capacity just didn't have
Speaker 1: an infrastructure to move it down to Sishuan. So better
Speaker 1: interconnecting the regional grids within the country could go a
Speaker 1: long way to solving these issues in the future. And
Speaker 1: just getting back to the weather. The great surround Bloomberg
Speaker 1: about rain seating drones. Tell us about that. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this is something that China specializes in. They have the
Speaker 1: They basically fly airplanes or drones into the sky whenever
Speaker 1: the humidity levels rise enough, and they dropped these rain
Speaker 1: seating technology. It's it's usually like silver iodide or or
Speaker 1: different rods that are designed to sort of pull the
Speaker 1: moisture in the air together until it's dense enough that
Speaker 1: rain drop. Let's fall in the rain actually instead of
Speaker 1: you know, staying up as water vapor in the atmosphere
Speaker 1: drops down onto the ground and you know, helps crops
Speaker 1: and helps rain. They've done this before the Olympics. For example,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, they seated the rain clouds
Speaker 1: to make sure it rain before the Olympics so the
Speaker 1: skies were clear when the athletes came as. China has
Speaker 1: a long and proud history of doing it. The it
Speaker 1: seems we've worked this weekend as the rain came down,
Speaker 1: although scientists are still sort of I would say up
Speaker 1: in the air about how it actually is all right
Speaker 1: down Thank you as always down Myrtel Bloomberg, Asia Energy
Speaker 1: Reporter with US in Beijings and fascinating reporting by the
Speaker 1: team on what is happening in Situan.