The Southern Regional Power Market Started Trial Run Accelerating the Construction of National Unified Power Market System
On July 23rd, the southern power market started a trial operation on five provinces (Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and Hainan), covering medium-and long-term power, spot power and auxiliary service transactions. The system operates according to the same trading rules and technical standards, and the tariff may be increased or decreased according to the actual demand and supply conditions, which provides more options for power generation enterprises and consumers. This marks the accelerating construction of the national unified power market system.
In recent years, the construction of China's electric power market has been steadily and orderly progressed, preliminarily shaping the multi-competition entities structure, significantly enhancing the role of the market in optimizing the allocation of resources, and increasing the proportion of power traded to market. The power market trading organized by nationwide electricity trade centers reached 2.48 trillion kWh, which accounted for about 60.6% of the total power consumption, 45.8% higher than the previous year.
At the same time, the power market suffers from incomplete system, incomplete functions, non-uniform trading rules, and market barriers in cross-provincial and cross-regional transactions. In January this year, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration issued the "Guidance on Accelerating the Construction of a National Uniform Power Market System", which stated that by 2025, "a national unified power market system is to be established preliminarily" and “the market-oriented cross- regional transactions and the scale of green power transaction will be significantly increased".
On 23 December, more than 157 power plants in Guangdong, Yunnan and Guizhou entered into the first inter-provincial spot power trade of southern regions with consumers, and the daily market-based electricity power trading reached 2,700 GWh. After the South China power market starts trial operation, the medium-and long-term power transaction period will cover year, month and week; Spot power transaction will be extended from Guangdong to Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and Hainan, realizing inter-provincial and inter-regional spot trancation in the five southern provinces and regions; The variety and compensation mechanism of auxiliary services market will be further improved. It is estimated that the accumulative market-oriented power trading of southern regional power market will reach 1.11 trillion kWh, close to the all-inclusive power consumption of Guangdong, Yunnan and Guizhou in 2021.