Tianjin's municipal industrial and information technology bureau released the "Implementation Plan for Tianjin's Integration into the National Unified Electricity Market System" on July 23rd. The plan outlines that by 2030, Tianjin aims to fully integrate into the national unified power market, progressively enabling all types of power sources and all power users, except those with guaranteed supply, to directly participate in the power market.
The plan promotes the integration of cross-provincial and cross-regional transactions with intra-provincial ones, ensuring stable operation of the electricity spot market and achieving more efficient allocation and utilization of power resources over a larger area.
Regarding power resources, the plan encourages co-competition between new energy sources and conventional thermal power both within and across provinces, fostering regional power mutual support. It also calls for the completion and operation of the ultra-high voltage transmission project from Datong to Tianjin South by 2027. Local 500 kV backbone grids and 220 kV grid sub-areas will be optimized to enhance the capacity for renewable energy grid integration and consumption.
In the area of the power market, the plan accelerates the construction of an electricity spot market, aiming for trial operation by the end of 2026. It strengthens contract signing and fulfillment in the medium- to long-term market, ensuring that priority cross-provincial generation plans are fully covered by annual medium- and long-term contracts.
The plan outlines improvements to the medium- and long-term market trading mechanism, pushing for higher frequency and more flexible trading methods. Research and design of the ancillary services market system are also planned. It emphasizes research on ancillary services mechanisms like frequency regulation, reserve capacity, and ramping in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, aiming for joint clearing of these markets with the spot market. The cost of ancillary services will be effectively passed on based on the principle of "those who benefit bear the cost."
The plan also focuses on improving the green power consumption and certification mechanism. It aims to expand the scale of green power consumption by studying the establishment of a system combining mandatory and voluntary green certificate consumption. It encourages the signing of long-term green certificate purchase agreements between generation and consumption sides and ensures full coverage of green certificate issuance. The plan actively promotes green power trading to fulfill cross-provincial new energy priority generation plans and promotes various green trading models, including multi-year contracts and aggregated trading.
The plan advocates for orderly research into capacity market mechanisms. It will implement capacity pricing policies for coal and gas power and will study the establishment of capacity pricing mechanisms for regulatory resources like pumped storage and new energy storage. After the continuous operation of the electricity spot market, it will push for the establishment of a reliable capacity compensation mechanism on the generation side to support the construction of a new-type power system.
Retail market construction and management will be standardized. Users will be able to register for the market on a monthly basis. After the spot market operates, the time-of-use pricing mechanism will be better aligned with the spot market, using time-of-use price signals to guide demand-side resources in actively participating in system regulation. The management of electricity retail companies will be strengthened, guiding them to upgrade into comprehensive energy service providers.
For various market entities, the plan also states that distributed generation will be required to fairly bear system regulation costs. Distributed new energy sources will be supported to participate in the market through aggregated or direct transaction models. The scale of grid-procured electricity will be gradually reduced. From 2027, all users connected at 35 kV and above will be required to directly participate in the power market, and from 2028, all users at 10 kV will be required to directly participate.
The plan also mentions researching and improving the utilization of demand-side resources, accelerating the construction and development of virtual power plants in Tianjin. It will standardize the mechanism for new market entities like virtual power plants to flexibly participate in the power market, ensuring they fairly bear transmission and distribution costs, system regulation responsibilities, and social responsibilities, and pay government funds and surcharges as required.
Finally, the plan emphasizes power market credit evaluation and related management work. It will fully launch power market credit evaluation, strictly adhering to national standards to conduct standardized credit evaluations for all types of market entities. It will actively explore feasible paths for evaluating emerging entities like virtual power plants and new energy storage, gradually expanding credit evaluation from key entities to all market entities. This will accelerate the construction of a market management mechanism based on credit and classified by risk level, providing a solid foundation for creating a fair, honest, and orderly power market environment.