China News Agency, Beijing, August 24 (Liu Wenwen) Recently, due to extreme weather, power shortages have occurred in some parts of China.
Can the shortage of electricity be solved by importing?
Can the electricity shortage problem be alleviated by regulating electricity prices?
How to further improve the energy security emergency mechanism?
China News Agency interviewed a number of industry experts to answer relevant questions.
Since this summer, Sichuan has been faced with the huge challenges of high temperature and water shortage. The demand for electricity has surged under the continuous high temperature. The sudden drop in precipitation has caused the hydropower generation capacity to drop off a cliff, posing a severe test to the guarantee of power supply.
As the province of Fengdian in previous years, Sichuan now needs help from other regions.
What is the transmission mechanism of electricity between power-rich and power-deficient areas?
Could the electricity shortage be solved by increasing imports?
Lin Boqiang, dean of the China Energy Policy Research Institute at Xiamen University, told China News Agency that it is feasible to appropriately expand the input and output of electricity, but costs and returns must be considered.
"Transmitting electricity between different regions will inevitably require the establishment of infrastructure, which often requires huge capital investment and takes a long time to pay off. Just to deal with occasional extreme weather, spending huge amounts of money on infrastructure construction will lead to huge losses. It's not wise to waste resources," he said.
Lin Boqiang further pointed out that the import problem is the same.
The premise of a fixed trade relationship between the two trading parties is that there is regular demand. In the absence of regular demand, it is uneconomical and unrealistic to transmit electricity through imports.
In fact, electricity is basically defined as a non-tradable commodity in economics, and the trade volume is very small in reality.
In the case of extreme power shortage, can the power shortage be eased by regulating the price of electricity?
In Lin Boqiang's view, the method of regulating electricity prices can also be effective, but it is usually better to take measures such as staggering peaks, avoiding peaks, taking shifts in shifts, and allowing electricity to be used in an orderly manner.
He added that the structure of China's electricity consumption determines the more efficient way to use electricity in an orderly manner.
China's industrial electricity consumption accounts for a large proportion, and a small amount of industrial electricity consumption can be adjusted to ensure residential electricity consumption.
In addition, electricity price reform is a long-term task. A sudden change in electricity price will cause panic among the people and bring a great impact on the social economy.
Therefore, considering the efficiency of action and the impact on society and economy, orderly electricity consumption is more suitable than regulating electricity prices.
Yuan Jiahai, a professor at the School of Economics and Management of North China Electric Power University, said in an interview with China News Agency that in the long run, it is indeed necessary to rely on the price mechanism to adjust supply and demand.
But the current hard power shortage situation in Sichuan, relying on price mechanism adjustment may not be effective.
"Taking Australia as an example, it has a mature power market. It encountered a power shortage some time ago. The price of electricity per kWh in the spot market was as high as 15 Australian dollars. It was still unable to form a short-term supply and demand balance, and finally the market circuit breaker mechanism was activated." Yuan Jiahai said.
"Of course, in terms of flexibly adjusting the price of electricity, how to use the price of electricity as a tool to adjust the load requires long-term exploration and efforts." Zhou Xiaoxin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, added.
"Under extreme weather conditions, the terminal demand increases, and different types of power sources on the supply side will be restricted to varying degrees. With the development of renewable energy, the uncertainty on the power side under extreme weather conditions will be greater." Yuan Jiahai warned, Sichuan The lack of power, the previous problems in Texas, and the problems in Europe last year are all actual cases of extreme weather affecting the security of power supply, and the risks may be even greater in the future.
Extreme weather occurs frequently. How to further improve the energy security emergency mechanism to ensure energy supply?
Lin Boqiang said that from a technical point of view, it is not difficult to "add one more insurance". Of course, one more line can provide more protection, but it means huge investment and uncertain returns.
"Currently China's problems are relatively easy to solve. The structure of China's electricity consumption determines that as long as the relevant provinces use electricity in an orderly manner, they can smoothly overcome this difficulty." Lin Boqiang said, "Unlike China, the electricity consumption of American residents is It is higher than industrial electricity consumption, so once there is a power shortage, it is difficult to ensure residential electricity consumption through orderly electricity consumption.”
"Of course, assuming that extreme climate changes will become more frequent in the future, countries will make more early warnings and investments in energy security," said Lin Boqiang.
"The lack of electricity this time is mainly due to extreme weather. Considering the periodicity of water and electricity supply, how to deal with similar power shortages is worthy of in-depth study." Zhou Xiaoxin told China News Agency.
Taking Sichuan as an example, Zhou Xiaoxin pointed out that Sichuan can make full use of local natural gas resources and develop gas power generation as soon as possible to improve the power generation structure.
At the same time, some coal-fired power should be retained.
"Currently, the proportion of gas-fired power generation in Sichuan is still relatively small. In the long run, if gas-fired power generation can be further developed to cooperate with some coal-fired power generation, it will greatly improve the resilience of the power system." Zhou Xiaoxin said.
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