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Southern Energy Watch

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ZW reporter Liu Bin

Editor Huang Yanhua

Review Jiang Li

On April 7, the Hubei Provincial Development and Reform Commission and the Hubei Provincial Energy Bureau issued the "Promotion Plan for Reducing Electricity Costs for Industrial and Commercial Users in the Province in 2024"(hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), proposing comprehensive policies to promote upstream entities and downstream users. Participate together and strive for a simultaneous reduction in explicit and hidden costs to ensure that the electricity costs for industrial and commercial users in Hubei Province will be reduced by 5 billion yuan in 2024.

In June 2022, Hubei proposed optimizing the business environment with cost control as the core, and taking the electricity price of industrial and commercial users as a breakthrough to reduce the energy cost of enterprises. Subsequently, two policies were issued to reduce the electricity cost of industrial and commercial users.

Where Does Discounting Space Come From?

The plan puts forward 20 specific key tasks, including reducing the comprehensive online electricity price, strengthening fee sharing control, optimizing industrial and commercial time-of-use electricity price policies, implementing demand electricity price concessions in depth, promoting the reduction of user power connection costs, and continuously clearing and standardizing electricity resale charges.

在降低综合上网电价方面，《方案》提出要推动降低煤电燃料成本， 全面清理规范铁路及港口货运杂费，减少电煤流通环节不合理成本； 引导煤电电量电价合理形成，开展煤电企业经营成本调查；严格煤电容量电费考核；加强省内水电高效利用；积极争取更多低价电量，** Strive to increase the proportion of electricity from the Three Gorges and Gezhouba to be retained in Hubei, increase the purchase of hydropower from Suwalong, and increase the purchase of low-cost new energy in North China and Northwest China through the Changnanjing-Jingjiang and Shaanxi-Wuhan direct current flows **； 完善电力现货市场价格规则，Ensure that spot prices operate within a reasonable range.

在加强费用分摊管控方面，《方案》提出，降低上网侧线损费用；促进新兴市场主体参与系统调峰，鼓励储能、虚拟电厂、负荷聚合商等发挥 负荷削峰填谷、优化电能质量等作用；**严控 居民、农业交叉补贴规模， Carry out a comprehensive review and inspection of users who implement residential and agricultural electricity prices, and promptly correct those that do not fall within the scope of application. Reasonably reduce the scale of cross-subsidies for electricity prices borne by industry and commerce; urge enterprise-owned power plants to fairly bear cross-subsidies for electricity prices, **对非余热、余压、余气自备电厂严格按照国家规定征收交叉补贴，征收资金全额用于平抑工商业电价 ；在工商业电量购销过程中严格执行国家核定的输配电价标准，损益资金用于降低工商业电价。

The proposal also optimizes the differentiated electricity price policy and supports enterprises in their independent cost reduction and efficiency improvement. In March 2024, the Hubei Provincial Development and Reform Commission issued the Circular on Issues Related to Improving the Time-of-Use Electricity Price Mechanism for Industrial and Commercial, proposing to optimize the time-of-use electricity price mechanism according to the grid load characteristics, renewable energy output characteristics, and electricity spot market price signals.

The biggest change in the newly introduced time-of-use electricity price mechanism is to adjust the 6-hour peak period when enterprises originally concentrated production to a 4-hour flat period and a 2*** hour valley period. Among them, photovoltaic production and system consumption are more difficult. 12:00-14:00 is the valley section. According to the new mechanism, the flat and valley sections basically cover the periods when industrial and commercial users consume large electricity during the day, which is conducive to users using low-cost electricity and at the same time improving the consumption level of new energy.

Hubei's installed wind power and photovoltaic power generation capacity has exceeded 33 million kilowatts. Making full use of the peak period of new energy power generation is an important measure to reduce electricity costs for industrial and commercial users.

Data from State Grid Hubei Electric Power Co., Ltd. show that from January to March 2024, the new energy power generation load in Hubei Province hit a record high six times. The first record high occurred at 12:24 on January 11, when the new energy power generation in the province was 17,091,300 kilowatts, an increase of 326,600 kilowatts or 2.90% compared with the peak value in 2023, accounting for 55.36% of the electricity load at that time. The latest record high occurred at 11:23 on March 22, when the new energy power generation was 20,695,600 kilowatts, an increase of 3,930,900 kilowatts or 23.44% compared with the peak value in 2023, accounting for 70.53% of the electricity load at that time.

The Plan also calls for intensifying the supervision of the power market trading, promoting the reduction of user electricity costs, and continuously cleaning up and standardizing the transfer of electricity charges and other measures.

A Big Province's Concerns over Installations

The Price Management Office of the Hubei Development and Reform Commission pointed out in an article on policy interpretation of the "Plan" that the background of the policy was introduced in early 2024. The work report of the Hubei Province Government proposed that **** ten people's livelihood projects should be promoted in 2024, including reducing industrial and commercial electricity costs by 5 billion yuan, effectively relieving enterprises and reducing burdens. In addition, in 2023, the Hubei Province Development and Reform Commission and the Hubei Province Energy Bureau will take the lead in promoting the successful completion of the goal of "reducing electricity prices by 3 points" for industrial and commercial users, which was recognized.

In June 2023, the Hubei Provincial Government issued the "Notice on Further Reducing Enterprise Costs," which clearly stated that the average household electricity price for industrial and commercial enterprises would be reduced by 0.03 yuan/kWh from June to December 2023 compared with January to May. At the subsequent press conference on "Several Measures to Further Reduce Enterprise Costs," relevant officials from the Hubei Provincial Energy Bureau proposed specific measures to reduce electricity prices, including accelerating the construction of supporting power sources such as Jingzhou Thermal Power Plant Phase II, Suizhou, and Yicheng; increasing the province's electricity generation and inter-provincial medium- and long-term negotiated electricity during peak electricity consumption periods; reducing inter-provincial high-priced spot and emergency electricity purchases; lowering electricity purchase prices; and actively striving for low-priced resources from Three Gorges and other external power sources.

Empowering industrial and commercial enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and promoting economic development, are the main starting points of Hubei's two recent policies to reduce electricity costs for industrial and commercial users.

According to the "2023 Hubei Power Market White Paper"(hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") released by the Hubei Electric Power Trading Center, as of the end of 2023, Hubei's total installed power generation capacity reached 111.1465 million kilowatts (including 22.4 million kilowatts in the Three Gorges), including 37.9263 million kilowatts of hydropower, 39.9825 million kilowatts of thermal power, 8.3648 million kilowatts of wind power, and 24.8729 million kilowatts of photovoltaic power generation. Although Hubei's hydropower installed capacity accounts for a relatively high proportion of the total installed capacity, reaching 34.1%, the Three Gorges and Gezhouba Power Stations mainly transmit electricity to the outside world. Coal power is still the main source of Hubei's electricity supply. Due to Hubei's own lack of coal resources, thermal coal mainly relies on supply from other provinces, which makes Hubei's comprehensive power generation cost significantly affected by coal prices.

According to the white paper, in 2022, the market-based transaction and settlement electricity in Hubei Province was 127.9 billion kWh, with an average settlement price of 496.02 yuan/MWh, which is 0.449 yuan/kWh higher than the national average; the direct transaction contract settlement electricity for coal-fired power in the province was 84.127 billion kWh, with an average settlement price of 496.77 yuan/MWh.

Affected by the severe shortage of the annual water inflow of the Yangtze River, the Three Gorges Power Station completed power generation of 78.79 billion kilowatt-hours in 2022, a decrease of 23.98% year-on-year, and the Gezhouba Power Station completed power generation of 17.434 billion kilowatt-hours, a decrease of 9.46% year-on-year, which further increased the pressure on the electricity supply in Hubei Province.

In 2022, Hubei's total purchased electricity reached 169.68 billion kWh, of which 14.36 billion kWh were spot transactions and 3.53 billion kWh were emergency transactions. Part of the emergency interprovincial electricity purchase cost is usually shared by all industrial and commercial users according to their actual electricity consumption, which has to some extent pushed up the electricity price level for industrial and commercial users in Hubei Province.

The Price Management Office of the Development and Reform Commission of Hubei Province pointed out in the above-mentioned policy interpretation article that the "Plan" comprehensively summarizes and compiles effective cost reduction measures in the early stage, and combines the new situation and new requirements to deeply explore new paths and new methods, mainly to solve three major problems.:The first is to promote the simultaneous reduction of explicit and implicit costs; the second is to promote the coordinated efforts of the government and the market to promote cost reduction:The third is to promote upstream and downstream entities to actively integrate into the overall situation of cost reduction. "Make sure that no big items are leaked, no small items are dropped, the 'open places' can be reduced, and the 'dark places' can be reduced."