The National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy
Administration have issued a notice to pilot market-based trading of
transmission rights on the Yunxiao DC link. Regulators say transmission-rights
trading is a new market product for scarce interprovincial transmission channels
that fills an institutional gap in allocating transmission capacity within the
national unified power market. Wang Peng, professor at North China Electric
Power University and executive director of the National Energy Development
Strategy Institute, said cross-region DC transmission has been managed by
administrative scheduling; marketising transmission rights alongside a
complementary energy market will allow supply and demand to more directly
determine allocation and help resolve regional power supply-demand mismatches.
The notice singles out defining priority and allocation rules for
transmission-channel capacity as a core issue and proposes using market
mechanisms to allocate transmission rights. If the pilot proves mature and
replicable, the mechanism could be extended to other interprovincial links to
deepen coordination between transmission-rights and energy markets and
strengthen the national unified power market system.
