The situation of the grid alone needs to be broken

Xinhua News Agency, Shanghai, May 31st The two-year delayed sale price adjustment finally broke the ice. The National Development and Reform Commission announced that since June 1st, prices of industrial and commercial electricity and agricultural electricity in 15 provinces have been raised by 1.67 cents per kilowatt-hour, but the price of electricity for residents has not changed.

At the same time, the National Development and Reform Commission announced that it has raised the on-grid tariffs of 12 provinces since April 10. The on-grid tariffs in Anhui, Hunan, and Jiangxi have been raised since June 1, and the on-grid tariffs in these provinces have been raised by an average of 2 points per kilowatt-hour.

The background of the introduction of the above policies is that since May, some areas have been experiencing power cuts and power cuts, and in some places there are coal-fired power companies shut down or shut down under the name of maintenance. In early May, according to Hunan Provincial Electric Power Company, the province's total thermal power installation capacity was 14.17 million kilowatts, but only 7 million kilowatts was available for power generation. More than half of thermal power installations were shut down, and a large part of them were under maintenance.

A person in charge of a power generation company in Xiangyang, Hubei Province, said that several of the company's CEOs have gone out to buy coal throughout the country. However, due to the high coal prices and the national coal transportation capacity, they have tried various methods. However, the coal that can be shipped to Fuyang is still less than half of the same period of last year. In the first four months of this year, the loss of this power plant has reached 130 million yuan.

According to industry analysts, there are mainly two types of price adjustment provinces announced by the National Development and Reform Commission: one is the coal export provinces or main producing areas in North China and East China, such as Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong and Anhui; and the other is within the scope of Huazhong Power Grid. Provinces with long-standing problems in hydropower provinces or coal transportation channels, such as Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, and Chongqing. “The above two types of provinces basically cover the areas where the losses in the thermal power industry in the country are relatively serious and the operating conditions are relatively poor.”

"It is expected to increase the CPI by less than 0.1 percentage points and increase the PPI by about 0.4 percentage points," said Wang Wei, an analyst at Shanghai Guotai Junan Securities Power Industry Co., Ltd., because electricity price adjustments mainly cover industrial and commercial sectors and agriculture, and residents' electricity consumption has not been adjusted, the impact on CPI is relatively small. Small, the impact on PPI is relatively more obvious.

Wu Libo, deputy director of Fudan University's Energy Economics and Strategy Research Center, said that the increase in terminal electricity price is linked to the previous increase in on-grid electricity prices, and is the inevitable result of upstream and downstream transmission of electricity reform. Since industrial and commercial and agricultural electricity accounts for more than 80% of the country's electricity consumption, this part of the increase in sales price can greatly increase the income of the grid companies and make up for the loss caused by the unilateral rise in grid-connected electricity prices.

According to statistics compiled by the China Federation of Electric Power Enterprises, in 2010, residential electricity consumption only accounted for 12.2% of the total electricity consumption in the country; the remaining 85% were for large industrial and industrial and commercial use, and electricity for agriculture was used throughout the country. The ratio is less than 2.5%.

On the other hand, for a long period of time, China’s investment ratio in the power generation and transmission and distribution sectors has been uneven. For a long period of time, the ratio between the two is around 6:4. This proportion has continued to expand in the past decade. The emergence of the current "electricity shortage" is largely due to the backwardness in transmission and distribution.

In addition, the current Chinese power industry lacks a reasonable profit model. Take Britain as an example, on-grid tariffs are quoted by various power generation companies and then selected through the power grid. In this way, the lowest cost price can be achieved online, and the cost of the power generation enterprise can also be reflected. Wu Libo suggested that the power generation sector should be guaranteed full competition. The power grid should play the role of a public network. As a third-party public service platform, it has a fixed profit and should not be solely for profit.

Industrial Bank (601166) economist Lu political commissar of the view that the power reform should adhere to market-based pricing mechanism, should allow more private enterprises to enter the power generation and transmission industry, allowing more competitors to exist. Especially in the field of transmission and distribution, more market players should be allowed to enter, and two or three rivals with similar strengths should be introduced to break the grid alone situation.