What are the reasons for power outages and production shutdowns?
1. Lack of coal and electricity
The power cut is essentially a shortage of coal and electricity. National coal production has hardly increased compared with 2019, while power generation is rising. Beigang stocks and coal stocks in various power plants have dropped significantly. The reasons for the lack of coal are as follows:
(1) In the early stage of coal supply-side reform, a number of small coal mines and open-pit coal mines with safety issues were closed. There were no large-scale coal mines. Under the background of improving coal demand this year, coal supply was tight;
(2) The export situation this year is very good. The power consumption of light industrial enterprises and low-end manufacturing industries has increased. Power plants are large coal-consuming consumers. The high coal prices have increased the production costs of power plants and the power of power plants to increase production is insufficient;
(3) This year, coal imports have changed from Australia to other countries. The price of imported coal has risen sharply, and the price of coal in the world has also remained high.
2、Why not expand the supply of coal, but curtail power instead?
The demand for power generation is large, but the cost of power generation is also increasing.
Since the beginning of this year, domestic coal supply and demand have continued to be tight, thermal coal prices have not been weak in the off-season, and coal prices have risen sharply and remain high. The price of coal is so high that it is difficult to fall, and the production and sales costs of coal-fired power companies are severely inverted, and the operating pressure is prominent. According to data from the China Electricity Council, the unit price of standard coal for large power generation groups rose by 50.5% year-on-year, while the electricity price remained basically unchanged. The loss of coal power companies was significantly enlarged, and the coal power sector suffered an overall loss.
According to calculations, for every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by the power plant, the loss will exceed 0.1 yuan, and the loss of 100 million kilowatt-hours will cause a loss of 10 million. For those large power generation companies, the loss will exceed 100 million yuan a month. On the one hand, the price of coal remains high, and on the other hand, the floating price of electricity is under control. It is difficult for power plants to balance the cost by raising the on-grid electricity price. Therefore, some power plants would rather generate less or even no electricity.
In addition, the high demand brought by incremental orders for overseas epidemics is unsustainable. The increased domestic production capacity due to the settlement of incremental orders will become the last straw to crush a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the future. Only by limiting the production capacity from the source and preventing some downstream companies from blindly expanding can they truly protect the downstream when the order crisis comes in the future.
Transfer from: Mineral Materials Network
Post time: Nov-04-2021
