BEIJING, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Beijing's power grid company has organized workers in rural Beijing for power support as more than 1 million households have converted their coal-fired boilers into electricity heaters.
More than 1,000 special workers have been assigned to villages completing coal-to-electricity conversion to help with troubleshooting and emergency response, said Lin Tao with the State Grid Beijing Electric Power Company.
Nearly 200 emergency repair teams and 150 generator vehicles have also been arranged for the villages so that power failure, if it occurs, will last no more than 30 minutes, said Lin, deputy head of the company's maintenance and repair department.
"As soon as we receive calls from villagers, we find the heating device, type and current condition before asking device suppliers and repairmen for troubleshooting," said Zhang Po, one of the workers in Gaoliying Village of Shunyi District.
To make the air cleaner, China has been replacing coal-fired boilers with natural gas and electricity-powered heaters in its smog-plagued northern regions.
Over 4.7 million households in 21,516 villages in the inspected area have completed coal-to-gas or coal-to-electricity conversion, 3.94 million of which finished the switch this year, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
