Memories of two years of power reform: good or bad, and you

In March 2015, several opinions on further deepening the reform of power system (Zhongfa No. 9 document) were officially issued and implemented. Based on this document, China has launched a new round of power system innovation. It clarifies the general idea and several guidelines of power innovation, and puts forward the first task list and guidelines for all aspects of power development (not limited to system innovation, but including many encouragement and restraint methods to correct mall failure, as well as temporary policy organizations in the transition period).

Although the document itself has the defect of "generalization of innovation content and becoming an all encompassing basket", the contents of the subsequent innovation rules focus on the policy innovation of system, mechanism and expansion competition, and begin to do the right thing. Over the past two years, relevant innovation operations have been carried out continuously, especially in transmission and distribution price accounting, bilateral sales of large users, pilot projects of provincial power malls, and rolling out incremental (or even stock) power sales and distribution. Most provinces and regions have drawn up power innovation schemes and carried out pilot and experiments with different degrees and different progress. Accordingly, various innovative methods have symbolic meaning, procedural meaning and even ultimate essential meaning.

Along with this, there are controversial comments on the policy, direction and current results of innovation, such as how to comment on the decline of electricity price, whether to improve the prospect of abandoning wind and limiting power, and whether the construction of shopping malls is in the right direction and can continue.

On such an innovation central node, this paper does not want to give a panoramic summary, but intends to give "good" (the recent good trend), "bad" (severe distortion, perhaps new potential problems, simply constitute various hidden dangers and affect the sustainability of innovation), "hate" for the primary innovation that may be happening now (long-term existing and key problems affecting power and long-term development) and analyze possible dangers and prospects.

"Good" operation: the essential change is good. The electricity price could have been so cheap.

For a long time, the comments on China's electricity price level have been dominated by interest groups, showing two misleading tendencies. One is to talk about the electricity consumption of residents who occupy less than 15% of the electricity. The other is to compare the prices of power products that simply can't be traded according to the exchange rate conversion. Both of them have many problems, such as logic, comparability, whether there is policy meaning or not. Moreover, the expectation of long-term price rise is one-sided.

The direct purchase of large users, the calculation of transmission and distribution electricity price and the bidding of shopping malls make the price level of the composition drop to varying degrees compared with the benchmark electricity price of the government, which can reach as much as 1-20 cents. People finally have a chance to realize that electricity prices could and should be so cheap. As a mechanism to represent supply and demand, electricity price is significantly different from the rated electricity price method of performance policy.

Of course, taking the "price composed of shopping malls" as the reference system, some price reductions are excessive (the following comments), but some areas still can't. for example, in Gansu, where the built wind power and photovoltaic capacity has long exceeded its own power load, the price composed of shopping malls should be close to zero at an appropriate time, High energy consuming and large users should enjoy this level of electricity price. The current price level is far from this "power level". Therefore, this situation can not release the useful signal of "suspending new units" in the sense of a long time, can not constitute an encouragement for the digestion of excess power, and worsens various problems such as abandoning wind, limiting power and continuing construction.

Breaking the monopoly of power grid and taking essential steps.

In the past, the power grid was basically an exclusive enterprise integrating power transmission and distribution, power sales, dispatching and construction. Moreover, due to the lack of independent transmission and distribution electricity price in the form of pricing, unified purchase and marketing were often the only buyers (from power plants) and only sellers (users) in shopping malls, with great shopping mall strength. On the basis of the separation of the main and auxiliary, this innovation has effectively carried out innovation in spreading new distribution power and formulating independent transmission and distribution electricity price, weakening the power of monopoly.

Of course, the separation of exclusive affairs still needs to be further cut in finance, function and even ownership, so as to reduce the control of its shopping malls and give other independent shopping malls the possibility of equal competition. It is urgent to comment on how to avoid the "plundering" of the power grid from the inside - the transfer of revenue between different transactions and on the inside and outside.

Set a clear timetable for future changes.

The timetable for 2017-2020 is now clear about the power spot mall and power generation and consumption scheme. No matter whether the organization of these progress becomes practical or impractical with the passage of time, a clear timetable undoubtedly provides a useful reference system for the process of comment innovation.

According to the competition policy, there are more and more plans, but less and less plans.

Shopping malls should adhere to the fundamental vitality, have the encouragement of long-term skill progress and upgrading, and fair competition is not less. However, China's traditional planning form of "more water and more water", in essence, restricts and excludes the competition. According to the detailed rules of power system innovation documents completed by the national power administration and other organizations, whether it is electricity, electricity or price, more and more are planned according to the competition policy, but less and less are planned according to the competition policy. Starting from the 13th five year plan, most of the "coordinated" power and power planning have been cancelled, and its methodology and paradigm have been completely transformed, with the foundation and support of shopping malls. This is a huge advance.

The construction of trading centers and shopping malls has procedural meaning.

At present, many trading centers and shopping malls have been set up in all provinces and regions across the country. Although they basically carry out electricity trading above the monthly standard, there is a lack of short-term shopping malls that increasingly show supply and demand, as well as changes in dispatching forms. However, these operations undoubtedly have procedural meaning. People can learn a lot from it and promote the further expansion and sophistication of the mall, including but not limited to software and hardware preparation, marketing and legal affairs.

"Bad" operation: lack of mechanism and non continuity

Low electricity price has become an optional policy, which is not sustainable.

Now that there is a low electricity price, it does not mean that it should not rise or be high in the future. If it is accompanied by a sharp rise in raw materials and power input (as shown in the coal mall in the second half of last year), the rise of electricity price should and is necessary.

Sensitive performance "should be high or low", sensitive mechanism, rather than the government's discretion and specified price, is indispensable.

Now, the acquisition of low electricity prices is partly due to the false high pricing of the central government in the past. It has to be said that there are also a large number of regions, which are attributed to the partial low prices completed by "indiscriminate means". For example, most people cut shopping malls further to allow more power plants and fewer users to enter shopping malls, which constitutes a greater imbalance between supply and demand.

The presentation of these "irrational" cheap prices may come from the lack of knowledge of bidders, the lack of short-term losses, or other distorted policies. These distorted policies (such as the assessment of the power generation capacity of power plants in some regions) make it necessary for some power plants to obtain the proportion of power generation due to other policies, even if the economic power generation is once at a loss (it means that the power generation income can not cover the variable cost, rather than the loss in the accounting meaning). This is an irrational behavior constituted by improper interference in the right of enterprise self-management.

There is still no clear method for transmission price accounting.

Transmission and distribution price accounting is related to the cost and income of the whole power system innovation. It needs objective and clear norms to define whether it is reasonable or not, and show dynamic incentive criteria. The primary measurement parameters, such as the determination of useful property, the specification and scale of qualified capital, and the yield policy, all need detailed rules. This is highly specialized. Now, the process of this calculation is still unclear, especially when it comes to subsidies between different regions, users and voltage levels.

Generally speaking, the transmission network is shared by most users. It is difficult to distinguish who uses more and who uses less. All users share the demand equally. But the distribution network can find a better way to distinguish who is the primary beneficiary. Therefore, only based on the calculation of voltage level, there may be large interspersed subsidies between users. We need to find a way that the public can better understand in order to break the form of "black box".

The strengthening of regulatory strength and ability is still not on the agenda.

With the weakening of monopoly power, shopping malls show more participants, especially in power sales, incremental distribution and trading centers. However, the useful operation of shopping malls is based on clear rules and strict performance conditions, which are inseparable from useful and transparent supervision. The strength and ability of supervision are severely lacking in the command ideological environment of "cheering up and gathering" in the past. This is an operation that needs to be put on the agenda as soon as possible.

Interference with the right to make free decisions on investment still exists, even for coal and electricity.

To establish a competitive power market, follow two basic principles - the top of the list and promise people to make mistakes with their own money; Second, either the correct operation or what the government needs to do. The former involves the right to make independent decisions on investment. The latter involves the question of whether to encourage compatibility. If so, there is no need for government intervention to command.

In 2016, the installed capacity of the coal power industry showed a surplus in various meaning measures (supply-demand balance, utilization rate, including the falling electricity price level that can not meet the recovery of capital contribution). The central power management department once again showed the excitement of controlling the total amount, which has cast a shadow on the structure and power problems beyond the total amount balance, such as the necessary internal optimization of coal power and the continuous progress of coal power skills in the future.

"Annoying" homework: pre historical approach

Some long-standing traditional thinking methods and misleading interest groups still greatly hinder our progress. These "annoying" jobs include:

Power dispatching data are not disclosed.

The real-time online disclosure of dispatching operation data is the basis for understanding many problems, especially whether the wind and light are abandoned, whether the long-distance transmission is sensitive, whether the dispatching is fair, and the degree of system redundancy is equal to the standby water.

China's power generation and power demand are still separated from each other in terms of system balance, and dispatching has greater discretion in many times of the year. The method of system balance lacks clear rules, especially how to define the error, who will compensate, how to calculate the cost and so on.

The non disclosure of this dispatching data has seriously affected the understanding of almost all problems in the power industry. China should introduce laws and regulations similar to the EU data Disclosure Project (eutransparency regulation n ° 543 / 2013) and the US information disclosure law to ensure the real-time online disclosure of power dispatching data, so as to facilitate the understanding of the public and all sectors of society.

Base load operation method of "upper large and lower small" and long interval transmission.

In the future when the wavering renewable power appears, "big" often becomes a huge obstacle to improving the sensitivity of power system. Since renewable power will greatly reduce the use level of all units and systems, the basic facilities that attach importance to property will increase rapidly for a long time due to the decline of the use level, and then become economically impractical, becoming "placing property".

In terms of the whole system, it is necessary to start from the perspective of the urgency of improving the sensitivity of the system, quickly stop the "big pressing small" operation, and consider early decommissioning of large-capacity thermal power units and transmission lines that are still in base load operation, especially high-voltage and large-capacity cross regional lines. The improvement of system sensitivity is still not paid enough attention in policy comments and introduction.

Generalization of peak shaving service

Benchmark electricity price and annual power generation scheme constitute a complete system of power management in the scheme period. However, with the deepening of innovation, this system will be continuously broken at all times, and then the generalization of the so-called "peak shaving service" will become a problem.

In the face of fluctuating demand and greater fluctuating renewable power, it is completely unreasonable to require the unit to be fully controllable and adjustable (otherwise, it means "service") and huge power loss. Together with this, the service balance form of big pot peak shaving needs to be changed quickly, and replaced by professional units more suitable for peak shaving. For example, expand the use scale of the built natural gas single / combined cycle units (start and stop, climbing, quick reciprocating, and small fixed property investment).

In these aspects, the existing electric power reform documents do not touch at all, and there may be self conflict problems, which urgently need to be corrected from the perspectives of organizational innovation and policy change.

epilogue

 

The general policy of power innovation with the fundamental feature of marketization is to reflect the changes of power price (value) in time, space and output sensitivity.