More than 1.5 yuan per kilowatt hour? How can electricity bills be arbitrarily increased
Recently, some regions have been trending due to charging high electricity bills. Some landlords charge tenants 1.5 yuan or even higher electricity bills per kilowatt hour for a long time. Due to the fact that the electricity bills paid by tenants are far higher than the normal national standards, controversy has arisen. Even some tenants claim that earning price differences through electricity bills is an important source of income for landlords. The behavior of illegal electricity fee hikes is quite common among the power supply entities in China and should be taken seriously.
What is power conversion? Simply put, it is the behavior of power grid enterprises that cannot directly supply power to end users and need to be transferred by other entities. There is a simple criterion for judgment: if the electricity bill of the end user is not directly paid to the power supply company, but to the power transfer subject, it is the power transfer. In some areas, due to the fact that only one electricity meter with the same property rights certificate and electricity usage nature can be installed, power supply companies are temporarily unable to achieve "one meter per household" for tenants. Under "One Floor, One Meter", each tenant's distribution meter is set by the landlord themselves, and the electricity bill is paid by the landlord on their behalf, providing space for electricity bill markup.
The types of power transfer entities are diverse and complex, including but not limited to old residential areas, commercial complexes, industrial parks, property companies, office buildings, and other operators. They own the property rights of power transfer facilities and provide power to end users and charge electricity fees through independent operation. For example, most merchants within the commercial complex do not directly pay electricity bills to the power grid enterprise, but are collected monthly by the property management company and then uniformly paid to the power grid enterprise. The intermediary between the power grid company and the end power users is the power transfer entity.
Due to historical reasons, there is a significant phenomenon of power conversion in China. For a long time since the reform and opening up, China's economic construction has developed rapidly, but there is a lag in the construction of power infrastructure. Many times, power supply companies can only build electricity infrastructure to substations and cannot reach every electricity user. However, economic development cannot wait for power supply enterprises to build infrastructure before starting. As a result, various social distribution network investment methods have emerged, such as government investment platforms, enterprise self investment, and individual self built distribution facilities, forming a large number of power transfer entities.
Can the main body of the power supply transfer invest and arbitrarily increase the electricity bill? The answer is negative. According to the Electric Power Law of the People's Republic of China, "it is prohibited for any unit or individual to add other fees to the electricity bill.". This means that, in addition to the government's pricing policy for electricity conversion, any unit or individual without the qualification to sell electricity shall not arbitrarily set prices, add any nominal service fees to the electricity bill, and earn an intermediate price difference.
The power industry is closely related to the daily life of the people and is an important guarantee for economic operation and social development. Reducing electricity prices has been a major focus of government efforts to benefit enterprises in recent years. The 2018 Government Work Report for the first time proposed the task of reducing general industrial and commercial electricity prices by 10%, mainly to tap into the potential by reducing grid charges and transmission and distribution prices. The 2021 Government Work Report proposes to further clean up unreasonable electricity price increases and continue to promote the reduction of general industrial and commercial electricity prices. In May 2022, the State Council issued a package of policy measures to solidly stabilize the economy, which once again clarified the need to reduce the costs of water, electricity, and network for business entities.
Due to factors such as unequal market operation status and information asymmetry between the power supply entities and end users, as well as weak awareness of rights protection among merchants, some power supply links have engaged in behaviors such as withholding electricity prices and illegally increasing prices, resulting in ineffective transmission and implementation of the national policy dividend of reducing electricity prices, seriously affecting and hindering the healthy development of business entities. As the "last mile" of electricity price reduction, the standardization of the power transfer process directly affects the implementation effect of the national electricity price reduction policy, and it is particularly urgent to overcome this obstacle.
Since 2018, China has been carrying out standardized cleaning on the price increase of power conversion, and has made positive progress. The relevant departments should further strengthen the promotion of electricity pricing policies in the power transfer process, carry out special inspections on fees in the power transfer process, strictly investigate and punish unreasonable price increases, and guide power transfer entities to collect electricity fees in a standardized manner. At the same time, power grid enterprises should increase their efforts to convert power supply entities into direct ones, promote the implementation of "one household, one meter" for eligible power supply entities, and gradually reduce the number of power supply entities. Taking multiple measures to effectively reduce the burden on terminal electricity enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises and individual businesses, and promote stable economic development.
How should power users protect their rights when encountering illegal price increases by power transfer entities? Firstly, one should learn to judge whether their electricity bills are unreasonable. If it is within the operating area of State Grid Corporation of China, power users can open the online State Grid APP to check the status of the power transfer fee code. The transfer power fee code is divided into three colors: red, yellow, and green, corresponding to different increases in the transfer power fee. It is clear at a glance whether there are unreasonable electricity prices. If the query result is yellow or red, users can directly report to the market supervision department.
It should be pointed out that many power transfer entities bear the investment and operation management costs of distribution network assets, and have paid funds for the construction of power infrastructure. The legitimate interests of power transfer entities should also be valued. We should use scientific and reasonable marketization methods to find a legal way to share costs for the power transfer entities, giving them endogenous motivation to improve power supply efficiency and optimize user electricity costs, rather than simply acting as intermediaries to profit from price differences.
