The coal most widely used in raising steam at thermal plants is a sub-bituminous type with heating values running from 3,000 to 5,000 kilocalories per kilogram. Lignites will continue to be used as seen in the erection of the Swiss/French-supplied thermal station. Coal consumption per kilowatt-hour of power generated has dropped, but no national averages for this indicator of efficiency are available. Recently, the Chinese have talked about blending in 5 to 10 percent of very low grades of 1,000 to 2,000 kilocalorie coal.31

A typical oil-fired Chinese thermal station will use Taching, Takang, or Shengli crude. At the Wuching plant in Shanghai, crude from Shengli is fired having a heating value of 10,000 kilocalories and a sulfur content of 1 to 1.8 percent.32 Taching crude exported to Japan is also often directly used for firing thermal station boilers because its high paraffin content makes processing difficult in Japanese refineries.

For thermal station work, the Chinese appear to have standardized on steam turbogenerators of 25, 50, 75, 100, and 125 kw. These are serially produced. Units of 200 and 300 MW with water-cooled rotors are now being manufactured and are in operation although their numbers are not great and it is questionable whether they can be considered to be in serial production. Initial production is underway at Harbin and probably Shanghai on 600-MW turbo-generators and the associated boilers. Based on past experience, the first 600-MW unit will probably not be online before 1981-82.

There is no evidence of the use of combined cycle plants (where gas turbine exhaust is used to drive a conventional steam turbine) for peaking or intermediate load service. This is the most efficient system for generating electricity from liquid or gaseous fossil fuels, but is probably not found in China owing to the relatively undeveloped nature of power gas turbine production and technology. There is no evidence of significant Chinese development in gas turbines for peaking or baseload service although the Chinese do have some foreign units of this type (see Table 2).

To increase efficiency, the Chinese are utilizing waste heat from hot flue gases and warm cooling water at power stations to heat other industrial plants. Some 120 facilities in Liaoning are using such residual heat. Although not used much in the United States, combined district heat and electric power stations are extensively utilized in Europe, especially in the Soviet Union.

At a Tientsin powerplant, where much of a gas turbine's exhaust heat was formerly wasted, 80 percent is now recovered and used to preheat the feedwater for a steam generating unit. Still, there is a little evidence of the more advanced concept of "energy centers" where steam is delivered to industrial process use after passing through a steam turbine in a central power station or where "byproduct" electricity is produced from excess industrial process steam using an extraction or back-pressure turbine. In Kiangsu at Changchou, one-tenth of the power produced is generated from waste industrial steam, and at the Harbin cement plant a 4.5-MW station uses waste heat to provide one-third of the power needed.

Other sources of electric power under development in China include geothermal units, solar power, and tidal stations. The Chinese have at least four experimental geothermal power generators in operation: Fengshun County, Kwangtung, 86 kW, started in 1971; Ninghsiang County, Hunan, operation stabilized at 300 kW in 1975: Huailai County near Peking, started in 1974; and Yangpaching, Tibet, where the first 1,000-kW unit began producing the high pressure vapor in 1977. Trial projects in both geothermal and solar electric power production are underway at Tientsin University.

There is no significant amount of electric power developed via solar means or from generators based on gas from methane digesters, although 4 million families in Szechwan use digester methane for cooking and heating. In certain localities, these developments could become of some importance.

The Chinese have at least one tidal power station, Kanchutan in Kwangtung, although it is only unidirectional and not a true tidal station. Depending on flow, capacity is 200 to 250 kW.

A brief description of each thermal power station may be found in Appendix 4.

PLANS

The Minister of Power Speaks

The national economic development plan is to modernize agriculture, industry, science, and technology, and national defense in order to propel China into the front ranks of the industrialized nations of the world by the year 2000. Announced by Premier Chou En-lai in January 1975 and revalidated by the important Taching conference in May 1977, this four modernizations program will place a heavy burden on the electric power industry-an industry characterized by Chairman Mao as one of the two "vanguards" (the other is transportation) which must lead in economic development.33

34

That the Chinese are already engaged in preparing this vanguard industry for the difficult task ahead is seen currently in Chairman Hua's directives concerning power development. At no time have actual capacity targets been released, but at the recent National People's Congress, Hua stated that the 10-year plan calls for the building or completion of 30 power stations. As a result of Hua's directives, the convening in December 1977 of a national power conference, and as indicated by the foregoing quotation, a very high priority effort is currently being directed at the acceleration of electric power development in an effort to place the industry in a strong pósition to support orderly growth of the economy.

Again, without revealing plan targets, the Minister of Water Conservancy and Electric Power, Chien Chen-ying in a significant November 1977 article and later at the national power conference provided some general information on how the PRC plans to develop electric power over the remainder of the 20th century.35

The guiding policy laid down by the party and the state council in 1977 stresses the simultaneous development of both hydroelectric and thermoelectric power in large, medium, and small stations. Emphasis

is to be given, however, to the creation of large hydroelectric stations as the future backbone of the Chinese power industry.

The Minister spoke pointedly of the need to complement hydro developments with erection of thermal plants in the vicinity of the hydros to meet regional demand when low water and irrigation reduce hydro operations. Expressing concern over the lengthy time required for the construction of hydros; she urged that construction continue in the winter of 1978 through the dry period in order to accelerate by 1 year the introduction of new hydroelectric facilities. While citing long construction times for hydros, she noted the cheaper cost of the power produced from them and the more rapid recovery of investment. Finally, and apparently as a preview of future plans, Minister Chien referred to Premier Chou's earlier call for the building of hydroelectric projects in the three gorges of the Yangtze River astride the Szechwan-Hupeh border.

The construction of thermal electric stations near coal mines, the so-called mine-mouth type of plant, is to be stressed to ease the burden of hauling coal by rail, one of the current problems causing power shortages. This in turn places the burden of transporting energy on the transmission systems which also may be a problem. The need to utilize low-grade forms of coal such as lignite and even peat is to be promoted. Chien cited the need for more thermal powerplants where waste or excess steam is used for heating purposes in adjacent towns and factories; this is extensively done in the Soviet Union but there are only a few such plants in the PRC. At no time did she mention thermal stations based on nuclear power, but there are indications China will soon move into such facilities although they would only play a minor role in the total power picture.

Minister Chien noted the need for increasing the reserve capacity of the industry. In this connection she devoted an entire paragraph to the discussion of safety in the industry as a means of preventing serious damage to the national economy. This is taken to mean plans must recognize the need for a larger reserve capacity to insure stability in the power supply. The need for improved transmission systems coupled with a call for greater automation and mechanization also relates to improved load management and great reliability of supply. All of the Minister's plan information, although very general, is useful in aiding in the assessment of just what prospects are in store for the Chinese electric power industry.

PROSPECTS

Constraints on Growth

In pushing for rapid development of the economy the Chinese are faced with a number of critical problems: improvement of agricultural productivity; the need for better management and more discipline in the industrial work force; higher wages; better scientific and technical education; and increasing exports to earn foreign exchange to support acquisition of foreign plant and technology. The strengthening of rail transport, the coal industry, and the iron and steel industry, all weak links in the economy, must be accomplished. Coupled with these problems is a need for political stability and relative freedom from natural disasters, 36

25 For more detail on Chinese economic and industrial growth see Field, Chen, and others in this volume.

Understanding plans for industrial growth in a developing country such as China is important because of the close relationship to the demand for electric power. If the electric power industry cannot be developed at a faster pace than industry generally, then industrial growth is likely to be inhibited. As Vice Premier Li Hsien-nien put it in December 1977, "unless the problem of the power supply is solved the national economy cannot possibly grow at a high speed."37

In the 23-year period 1952-75, industrial growth in China averaged an estimated 11 percent annually, although in 1976 it was close to zero and in 1977 about 14 percent.38 In the period 1978 to 1985 and even beyond to the year 2000, industrial growth could average anywhere from 6 to 14 percent annually, depending on the success Peking has in coping with the problems enumerated above. Sustained industrial growth at a higher rate seems unlikely and if it falls even as low as 6 percent, the announced program of modernization could only be considered a partial success.

Growth in Generation Capacity

A study of 12 rapidly industrializing countries in the 1960's showed that to support industrial growth adequately, electric power needs to be advanced about 1.4 times as rapidly. To date, the Chinese experience has been similar with this ratio at 1.6 during the period 1952-75, but dropping to 1.3 times during 1971-75. Using a 1.3 relationship, Table 7 shows what installed generating capacities would be required for selected years in order to support average industrial growth rates of 8, 10, and 12 percent annually over the period to the year 2000.

TABLE 7.-REQUIRED ELECTRIC POWER GENERATING CAPACITY TO SUPPORT INDUSTRIAL GROWTH RATES OF 8 PERCENT, 10 PERCENT, AND 12 PERCENT, SELECTED YEARS

At a 10 percent rate of industrial growth-13-percent for the power industry-Table 7 shows that at the end of this year capacity should be 45,800 megawatts, an increase of 5,300 MW over 1977. Construction projects currently underway where turbo-generators appear likely to come on-line in 1978 would contribute about 2,500 MW. Other projects, chiefly hydroelectric where information is sketchy, would contribute additional capacity as would the introduction of many more of the small hydros. The only 300 MW thermal turbogenerators that have been announced as entering production are those at the Wangting station, yet indications are that the Chinese have produced more than this so several more may be operative

17 FBIS, Dec. 19, 1977, E2.

Indicators, Op. Cit. n. 7 and FBIS, Dec. 27, 1977, E8.

elsewhere. Still, the total estimated new 1978 capacity from a review of construction projects would not appear to reach the required increment of 5,300 MW needed to sustain 10 percent industrial growth.

Power Equipment Industry

A review of the Chinese power equipment manufacturing industry reveals a considerable productive capacity. In fact, for many years this industry has appeared to produce more turbo-generator capacity than can be accounted for by annual increments to capacity as reflected by the electric power capacity series or by a power station by station analysis.

The power equipment plants, for example, are estimated to have produced 21,300 megawatts of capacity, 1971-75. During this time, imports of turbo-generators ran at least 1,900 megawatts for a total of 23,000 megawatts. China does export a few small turbo-generatorsthe largest, a 100 MW unit, went to North Korea. But during the period 1971-76-slipped a year to allow time for equipment installation after manufacture-the electric power capacity series (see Table 1) shows an increase of only 15,800 megawatts or less than 70 percent of the equipment capacity apparently available for installation. Retirement of obsolete facilities would account for only a small part of this. Information is lacking on whether some equipment produced was just not usable. A basic unexplained difference appears to remain. For further discussion of this difference and a review of the power equipment production series see Craig elsewhere in this volume. For additional detail on the manufacturing plants that comprise this industry, see Appendix 6.

From the analysis contained in this study and from the pronouncements of the Chinese leaders concerned with the economy, it appears questionable whether the equipment industry has the capability to supply the capacity needed in 1978 to maintain a 13 percent rate of growth in electric power capacity. It should be noted that long lead time items like turbines and generators had to be laid down in 1976 and 1977, if they are to be shipped to construction sites, installed, and be ready to produce power in 1978, moreover, 1976 was not a good year for industrial production. Additional capacity may be derived from imports, but no turbo-generators were noted in Sino-Soviet trade for 1977, nor were any imports, other than those already mentioned, seen in China's imports from the industrialized West.

Equipment Imports

Shortfalls, therefore, have to be made up by imports. During 1977, one would have expected to hear about negotiations in Peking concerning the purchase of large-scale thermal plants, but such was not known to have been the case, possibly indicative of greater difficulty in retrenching the economy in 1977 and planning for 1978 and beyond than had been thought. While it is assumed negotiations are now underway in Peking, it should be noted that for major projects such as large thermal stations, a contract in 1978 means online power no earlier than 1981-82. Hence, it is hard to see how any new purchases of foreign plants will materially assist in the required increments of electric power capacity until 1981 at the earliest.

27-427 - 79-29