Looking At Deep-Seated Contradictions From The New Characteristics Of This Year'S "Electricity Shortage"

The "electricity shortage" has been growing year by year. Why? Over the past 30 years since the reform and opening up, more than half of the years of power restriction have occurred due to imbalance between supply and demand. This year's "electricity shortage" has again become the focus of the society, and there are many new meanings.

Compared with previous years, this year's "electricity shortage" has three new features.

1. Burst ahead. Influence Limited. Compared with the "power shortage" that swept the country at least 25 provinces in 2003 - 2005, this year's "power shortage" mainly concentrated in East China, central China and southern China (only after summer came to North China). There were always 10 provinces with significant power gaps, and less than 15 provinces with tight electricity supply and demand.

Unlike the previous "electricity shortage" concentrated in summer and winter peak load period, the "power shortage" came into being in January, and it did not ease even in the 3 and April of the traditional electricity demand slack season.

2, hot transfer, not easy to deal with. The former "electricity shortage" is most serious in the economically developed areas along the southeast coast. Although the list of "power shortage" lists still has traditional disaster areas such as Jiangsu and Guangdong, the most notable ones are the economically underdeveloped provinces such as Hunan, Jiangxi, Chongqing and Henan, and even the traditional power export areas such as Anhui and Shanxi are beginning to tighten.

Although there are occasional factors such as inflow of water, industrial transfer is intrinsic. Decision Factor. The basic conditions such as primary energy resources, power layout and grid network are obviously difficult to adapt to the "power shortage" raid.

3, man-made shortages, new challenges. The number of power generation equipment utilization hours is the main index of generating capacity. If the number of hours exceeds 5000 hours, it will often be accompanied by "power shortage".

Since 2008, the number of power generation equipment utilization hours has been hovering between 4500 and 4700, indicating that power generation and installation are always abundant. In this case, "power shortage" still appears, which indicates that it is not a supply capability but an artificial system and mechanism. This is a new topic and new challenge which is totally different from the previous "electricity shortage".

This year's "electricity shortage" reflects three deep-rooted contradictions in China's economy.

1, the price system has serious disadvantages. The main reason for the "electricity shortage" is that the internationalization of coal prices and the co-existence of electricity prices are artificially suppressed, which reflects the chronic illness of China's resource price system.

More than 30 years of reform and opening up, the marketization of China's coal industry. international The level of electricity is increasing. The price of electric coal has risen from 20-30 yuan in 80s, 100 yuan in 90s, and 200-300 yuan in the beginning of the new century to more than 800 yuan. The electricity price adjustment lagged behind the primary energy such as coal and oil for a long time.

At present, industrial electricity price and civil electricity price are only about 70% and 40% of the international level. Electricity price regulation is an internationally accepted regulatory measure. However, artificially lowering electricity prices is a unique hidden rule in China's macro field. It is the common reason why China's "electricity shortage" has long been difficult to deal with and the high energy consuming industry is enduring.

Trend of China's oil, coal and electricity price index from 1985 to 2008

2, resource allocation is not systematic. The "electricity shortage" has a hidden characteristic. The "soft power shortage" on the whole is idle with the shortage of power shortage in some areas. Whether it is the 10 provinces and cities that are notable for "electricity shortage", or the power rich areas such as the northeast and Inner Mongolia, the price contradiction that causes "soft power shortage" is universal.

The Yangtze River Delta region has stopped the new thermal power plant due to the limitation of environmental capacity, and the UHV transmission projects approved by the Inner Mongolia power transmission channel have been delayed. Even without mentioning the advantages and disadvantages of the "plan" and "market" to the allocation of resources, from the planning to implementation, China's existing resource allocation system is obviously seriously lacking in systematic nature.

3, energy security is promising in the long run. This "power shortage" has a strong sense of early warning. The recent idle and long term "hard power shortage" threat is also a portrayal of China's energy security situation.

Because of the distortion of resource price system, China's electric power enterprises Investment The long term low income and the lack of continuous operation ability; the "coal electricity linkage" that artificially lag behind and do not comply with the rules of the game seriously disturb the normal operation order and long-term capital planning of the power enterprises. During the "11th Five-Year" period, the annual investment volume of China's thermal power has dropped from 226 billion 900 million yuan to 131 billion 100 million yuan. The proportion of thermal power in the new annual investment in power supply has dropped from 70% to 35%, not only the supporting regulation of power structure has declined, but also the sustainability of power supply is worrying.

In addition, since 2009, grid investment has also started to decline, and its stamina is not enough. In short, the willingness to invest in electric power enterprises is decreasing, which indicates that the "electricity shortage" will still be a protracted war, and will spread to the related markets such as finished oil products.

To resolve the contradiction of "electricity shortage", we need to treat three problems correctly.

1, electricity consumption per unit area has been improved. The main contradiction of the "electricity shortage" is on the supply side, not the demand side. Putting "energy consumption per unit of output value" as a binding index of national economic and social development is an important measure for energy saving, emission reduction, structural adjustment and transformation of development mode, but "electricity consumption per unit output value" can not be confused.

With the development of industrialization and urbanization in China, coal and other primary energy will be transformed from low efficiency and high pollution to direct production of power plants. In order to achieve clean and low carbon development, the vast majority of non fossil energy such as wind energy, solar energy and nuclear power will also need to be converted into electricity for human use.

Therefore, the trend of electricity consumption per unit area in China will be higher than that of energy consumption, which is also a structural adjustment and optimization of the mode of energy use. As for the direct use of "electricity consumption" as an administrative indicator for decomposition and assessment, it is even more absurd and absurd to harm children and grandchildren.

2, high energy consuming industries are normal fluctuations. The main reason for this "electricity shortage" is attributed to the so-called "retaliatory rebound" of electricity consumption in the so-called high energy consuming industries.

In the past 5 years, the proportion of electricity consumption in the 4 high energy consuming industries in China has fluctuated between 30% and 34.5%, and the short cycle changes in the macro-economy have been affected by inventory. This fluctuation is more affected by prices, demand and other markets. Factor The impact of local industrial policies is limited.

The decline in the prices of related products in 5 and June last year was the real reason for the decline in electricity consumption in 7 and August. The repressive policies introduced in some places also failed to prevent the subsequent rise in the proportion of electricity consumption (the effect was only reflected in the December month). Furthermore, as a normal economic phenomenon, the inventory fluctuation of high energy consuming products can become a kind of energy storage way to alleviate the "electricity shortage".

3, the trend of demand is becoming more and more normal. Although the year-on-year growth rate of electricity consumption in the whole society has declined overall since the beginning of this year, the fixed base curve of the monthly electricity consumption basically coincides with the historical standard curve, which has completely rid itself of the impact of the 2008 international economic crisis (the decline in the year-on-year growth rate is only a reflection of the higher base in 10 years). Though affected by the "electricity shortage", the macroeconomic trend is still in the normal range from the perspective of electricity demand.

From the perspective of cyclical factors, it may be in the stage of accumulating inventory at present, but there is no obvious feature of "de Stocking". If there is no other information such as finished goods inventory, market price and so on, the trend of electricity demand alone can not deduce the downward trend of macro-economy.

Looking ahead to the annual electricity situation, we should pay attention to three aspects.

1, electricity will increase, electricity will be stable, and demand will not fluctuate. With the further implementation of policies to curb inflation, China's overall economic growth has declined. The growth of electricity demand is also limited by the general trend. With the continuation of the policy of energy conservation and emission reduction, especially the accumulation of high energy consumption products, and the lack of initiative to bring electricity consumption growth, the forecast of power dispatching institutions is expected to be basically the same as last year (about 11%) and the overall trend is stable.

In addition, with the improvement of living standards (the air conditioning load has increased significantly), the peak load will increase further this summer. It is estimated that the national maximum daily load will increase by 14% over the same period last year, and the final actual increase will depend on the temperature and humidity of the day.

2, water supply, coal supply is doubtful, supply is still uncertain. With the end of the unit maintenance season and the adjustment of electricity price in some provinces and cities, it is expected to release some of the capacity of thermal power units, but there is also a real threat to the profit of coal prices. China's installed capacity will exceed 1 billion kilowatts at the end of this year. Price If the problem is not solved, the generating capacity of thermal power units will not be fully realized.

With the relief of drought in some provinces and regions, the power generation capacity of hydropower will be significantly restored, but this year's water supply situation is still generally withering, especially in southern regions such as Guizhou and Guangxi. In addition, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Chongqing and other provinces lack local installed capacity, the power transmission channel is limited, the market trading mechanism is not perfect, and there is a big uncertainty in the external power of the provinces.

3, short term coping, long term no solution, vigilance of power shortage into Chinese cancer. Looking forward to the development trend of China's "power shortage" in the next stage, first, it will expand from 3 regions in East China, central China and the south to North China. Two, the peak load gap will expand from 20 million to 3000 to 40 million kilowatts. It is estimated that the provinces with significant electricity shortages still do not exceed half of the total, and the load gap will not exceed 5% of the total installed capacity. The cumulative adjustment of electricity consumption by orderly electricity consumption measures will account for less than 1% of the total electricity consumption of the whole society. Although it has been aggravated by the previous stage, it will still belong to the "partial, time period" moderate lack of electricity.

But what is the real meaning of "ample supply capacity" and "overall balance of supply and demand" for enterprises or residents who are "partial" or "time"? Since the last round of the "power shortage" shortage, only three years later, in the 2008 Olympic year, the new "power shortage" with a low number of hours and a partial local period of moderate power shortage has already begun.

If we are satisfied with short-term problems and are not determined to work hard to solve the deep-seated problems of resource prices, this new "electricity shortage" may become a problem that has long plagued China's economic and social development. A recurrent and repeated social problem is to choose to adapt to "expensive and abundant" or continue to tolerate "cheap and short", and China's energy security mechanism needs to make a choice.