This summer, due to the extreme high temperature weather, residential electricity consumption surged, superimposed production end to maintain growth, and power supply in some areas was tight. Facing the severe situation of power supply and demand, China Merchants Bank has increased credit granting to power companies, provided more liquidity support, and helped power companies to ensure power supply during peak summer.
Power shortage is coming
Since July, with the arrival of extreme weather, the inflow of water in various river basins in the province has been relatively dry, and the hydropower generation in Sichuan Province has been greatly reduced. On the demand side, due to the high temperature driving load growth and undertaking the task of delivery performance, Sichuan Province has experienced a short-term shortage of power supply. At present, thermal power has undertaken the important task of “filling the gap”. According to the “Sichuan Daily” report on August 23, 67 thermal power plants in Sichuan Province are “full fire”, and the thermal power of the province’s total installed capacity is less than 16%, contributing about 1.5 times the power generation output of the installed capacity.
Sichuan Huadian Gongxian Power Generation Co., Ltd. has two 600,000-kilowatt supercritical coal-fired generating units, which are not only an important support point for supporting large-scale hydropower projects in Sichuan to implement power transmission from west to east, but also a power supply point for Yibin and other southern Sichuan areas. At the beginning of July, the situation of ensuring the power supply is imminent, and the whole unit needs to run at full capacity.
Adequate coal reserves are the premise for the aforementioned units to ensure power supply. According to estimates, at least 200,000 tons of thermal coal reserves with a total value of more than 160 million yuan are required to operate the two units at full load for half a month. China Merchants Bank took only half a month to open a domestic letter of credit under the comprehensive credit line and quota of nearly 100 million yuan, and combined forfaiting products to meet the financing needs of the aforementioned power companies. The financing cost is further down, which is more than 50BP lower than its stock working capital loan.
In addition, China Merchants Bank also provides financing services for power companies in Sichuan such as Guoneng Jintang, Huadian Guangan, and Guoneng Tianming, fully satisfying the capital sources required for the normal operation of relevant enterprises.
Financial assistance to ensure energy security
Affected by the generally dry inflow of water across the country since July, and the high temperature driving load growth, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, the monthly growth rate of thermal power in July turned from negative to positive, with a year-on-year increase of 5.3%.
In recent years, my country’s power supply has shown the characteristics of “continuous growth of the total power supply, and increments are inclined to non-fossil energy”. However, non-fossil energy is subject to the instability and limitation of related resource sources, and its comprehensive system construction still needs a long time. time. For a long period of time, thermal power has assumed the main responsibility for increasing production and ensuring supply. In the first half of 2022, thermal power generation above designated size increased by 2.9% year-on-year, 5.2 percentage points lower than the year-on-year increase in total power generation, but the total power generation accounted for 68.83%, which is still the mainstream.
However, due to the sharp rise in the prices of coal and natural gas, the increase was much higher than the increase in the price of electricity sold by thermal power companies. Some thermal power companies suffered operating losses and even high cash flow. Faced with the dual mission of supporting corporate development and social responsibility, the banking industry can exert its financial power to increase credit lines for thermal power companies, reduce financing costs, and enrich liquidity.
China Merchants Bank introduced to the relevant persons of the public line that on the one hand, the bank supports the development of non-fossil energy industries such as hydropower and wind power, and on the other hand, it focuses on deepening the understanding and operation of the thermal power industry.
A person familiar with the thermal power industry said that the cleaning effect of thermal power has been improving year by year. Under the dual-carbon goal, the thermal power industry promotes supercritical units and coal-to-gas to improve thermal efficiency with advanced technology; Water vapor is basically discharged through the chimney, which is more friendly to the environment; in addition, it plays an irreplaceable role in stabilizing supply and in peak-shaving services of the power grid, and the industry has a good development capability. In the future, thermal power generation will still maintain an annual growth rate of about 5% to meet the power needs of economic and social development.
It is understood that China Merchants Bank has implemented differentiated strategies for the target customer groups in the power industry in recent years. First, it has actively provided credit and financing support services for the five state-owned power groups of National Energy Investment, State Power Investment, Huaneng, Huadian and Datang. The second is for local power companies to select large-scale generating units of more than 300MW and increase business investment; for projects involving environmental protection that are not up to standard, business cooperation is not carried out.
The aforementioned China Merchants Bank also mentioned to the public that China Merchants Bank also supports the “three reforms and linkages” of coal-saving and consumption-reducing transformation, heating transformation and flexibility transformation of coal-fired power projects. , bills, project financing, bond underwriting and other products to provide differentiated services.
It was learned from China Merchants Bank that as of the end of July this year, the bank had granted 620 credits in the thermal power industry with a total value of more than 430 billion yuan, and organized the provision of various credit assets with a balance of over 120 billion yuan, which strongly supported the development of the power industry.