Monitoring data from the national power grid showed that electricity loads soared from Friday to Sunday in the provinces of Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi as well as Xinjiang, and reached all-time highs, state television said today.

Power grids in the northern and central regions were already hitting record levels of power consumption since last week, when temperatures started reaching above 40°C.

This month, seven provincial power grids in Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and Xinjiang, as well as power grids in northwestern China, have reached record levels of consumption.

The power load in the eastern province of Shandong, which is also the second most populous with more than 100 million people, reached 97.58 million kilowatts, its fourth new high this summer.