Cities across Guangdong experienced blackouts in the early hours of Monday morning, triggering concerns over the impact of nationwide power restrictions on the southern Chinese economic powerhouse.

Residents of Guangzhou’s Sanyuanli and Luochongwei districts were left without electricity for more than one hour before emergency repairs restored power. Blackouts were also reported in other cities, including Shenzhen.

While state-run China Southern Power Grid said the outages were due to a problem with its grid, the cuts raised questions over the company’s reliance on imports from other provinces.

Guangdong buys about one-fourth of its power from Yunnan province and the Three Gorges Dam. Of the remainder, it generates around half from coal, a fifth from natural gas, a tenth from nuclear and the rest from other hydro projects.

Authorities recently restricted power consumption in Hunan and Jiangxi, two provinces that receive hydropower from the Three Gorges, and Inner Mongolia. Officials said a seasonal rise in power consumption due to the winter weather and by factories were among reasons for the restrictions.

Downstream areas of the Three Gorges experienced months of drought following summer floods, leading to a sharp drop in energy generated, according to mainland news reports.

The restrictions come as China also stopped importing coal from Australia amid a trade spat.

Earlier, Russia’s Inter RAO said it might halt its supply of power to China due to high production costs.

The official Xinhua News Agency this month praised Guangzhou for its power supply because the provincial capital’s network pledged to keep power outages below 10 minutes a year in 12 districts.

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