On 1st of March 2016 the opening ceremony of Beijing Electric Power Trading Center Co., Ltd. (BEPTC) was held in Beijing. BEPTC is China’s first registered electricity trading organization and serves as a platform for optimized distribution and operation of energy resources.
Following up on the so-called decree No. 9 (we reported) on the reform of the power sector, BEPTC has been approved and registered and is now organizing transregional trading of electricity which is transmitted via HVDC power lines. This marks a concrete step of the power sector reform, which highlights the importance of establishing relatively independent electric power trading organizations and building a fair and regulated trading market platform. BEPTC is separated from other business segments of the grid operator and will be financially independent and self-funding.
As clean energy resources in China are mainly located in the southwest and the Northern provinces, it is essential to optimize the distribution of energy nationwide through larger power grids and trading markets. The transregional trading of electricity transmitted via the Yin-Dong HVDC line was the first operationalized trading of BEPTC, where 30 electricity consumers from the province of Shandong met 824 power generation enterprises from the provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia through its trading platform. For the first time electricity from transregional DC transmission lines was directly traded between electricity consumers and power companies. Out of the 9 TWh of electricity which was traded, more than 20 % has been generated from wind and solar.
