Research On Social Welfare Measure And Supply Mechanism Of Electric Universal Service

The electric power industry is an important basic industry and public utility that relates to the national economy and people’s livelihood. It is not only a means of production for all professions and trades, but also an indispensable way of production for people’s livelihood, which provides essential energy for the developments of national economy and society. As a network-typed public industry with characteristic of natural monopoly, the electric industry has a nature for universal service. Nowadays, the electric universal service in China has already realized the primary stage labelled as’Each household is electrified’, and it has entered the development stage labelled as ’Meeting the basic needs of electricity’. In order to improve the level of electric universal service, China has introduced several policies successively over last two years, including Distribution Network Construction and Transformation Action Plan (2015-2020), The Views of Accelerating the Construction of Energy Development and Poverty Alleviation in Poor Areas to Promote the Implementation of Poverty and The Views of the implementation of a new round of rural power grid upgrading during the "13th Five-Year". The introductions of those policies are beneficial for China’s strategic targets of solving energy poverty, achieving the equalization of basic energy service, and completing the process of building a moderately well-off society in all aspects.Considering the cultural backgrounds, income levels, healthy conditions and consumption habits, there are diversities of recipients’welfare perceptions brought by public policy of electric universal service. The individual welfare induction level is an important reference for national implementation of effective power universal service policies to enhance the level of electric universal service. Meanwhile, with the background that the current renewable energy technology is becoming increasingly mature, the power supply cost of which is declining, and a new round of electric power system reform is going especially that the transmission and distribution price is being calculated and the sale of electricity market is being liberalized, great changes have occurred in the power supply environment, such as the supply mode and compensation mechanism. Based on the aforementioned situations, this paper studied the social welfare and supply mechanism of electric universal service from the perspectives of demand side and supply side, and the main research contents are as follows:(1) Study on the significantly influencing factors of individual welfare induction of electric universal service. In view of the characteristics of individual welfare induction of electric universal service, the Ordered Probit model was used to construct the identification model of significant factors of individual welfare induction. On the basis of constructing the index system of influencing factors, through the questionnaire survey results, the significant factors that affect the individual welfare induction of electric universal service were identified;(2) Study on the influencing mechanism of significant factors on the individual welfare induction of electric universal service, and measure the individual subjective and objective welfare induction values. The effects of education level, health status, economic income and electricity consumption on individual welfare induction were analyzed, and the triangular fuzzy system theory was used to quantify the recipient’s welfare induction. On the basis of the subjective and objective significant indicators, the Shapely value method was used to quantify the objective individual welfare induction value and subjective welfare induction value of electric universal service;(3) Build the individual welfare induction function of electric universal service. Based on Amartya Sen’s "Capability Approach", the non-utility information was introduced in the process of constructing the welfare induction function, then the limit of arrow’s impossibility theorem has been broken through. From the perspective of demand side, indexes such as the "function" (electricity) and the "capacity" (Engel coefficient of electricity consumption) were introduced, and the least square regression model was used to construct the individual objective welfare induction function of electric universal service; indexes such as the "function" (electricity consumption) and "ability" (health status, education level) were introduced, and the least square support vector machine optimized by the antlion algorithm was used to build the individual subjective welfare induction function of electric universal service;(4) Build the social welfare function of electric universal service. Referred to the social welfare function construction thoughts of utilitarianism and Nashlism, from the perspective of demand side, the building method of social welfare function of electric universal service was put forward based on the social welfare functional, and the prospect theory was applied to calculate the prospect value of individual welfare induction, then the expected weights of individual objective and subjective welfare induction functions were obtained, and the objective social welfare function and subjective social welfare function were derived. Finally, by performing vertical plus of those two social welfare functions, the social welfare function of electric universial service was obtained. On this basis, the targeted electricity consumption was determined where the corresponding maximum value of social welfare was reached;(5) Research on the supply mechanism of electric universal service. From the perspective of supply side, the connotation and basic principles of grid extension and new energy micro grid were analyzed, and the optimal selection model of electric universal service supply mode based on LCOE was constructed. Based on the dynamic principal-agent model and real options theory, the cost compensation incentive mechanism of electric universal service was designed. Finally, the supply mechanism of electric universal service was empirically studied.Taking Fumin county, in Kunming city of Yunnan province as the empirical sample, through the pratical investigation and survey questionnaire, based on the above approach, the following main conclusions can be drawn:(1) Education level, health statues, family per capita monthly income, average outage frequency, monthly electricity bills and household appliances use time are significant factors of influencing recipients’welfare inductions of electric universal service; education level, health status, family per capita monthly income and household appliance use time have positive effects on individual welfare induction, while average outage frequency and monthly electricity bills have negative impacts on individual welfare induction;(2) The objective welfare induction function of electric universal service and the subjective welfare induction function of electric universal service of four regions including Daying town, Luomian minority town, Chijiu town and Yongding town were constructed. On the basis of this, the social objective welfare function and social subjective welfare function of electric power universal service were constructed; and then the social welfare function of electric universal service was constructed, and finally the targeted electricity consumption was obtained, which is 123.6kWh;(3) Among all the electricity supply mode, the LCOE of solar PV independent power generation micro grid is 0.658 yuan/kWh, which is the lowest; the LCOE of grid extension is 1.078 yuan/kWh, the highest one; the LCOE of wind power and biomass independent power generation micro grid are respectively 0.704 yuan/kWh and 0.885 yuan/kWh; the utilization of solar PV independent power generation micro grid for the electric universal service is the most economical. Meanwhile, the results of sensitivity analysis on distribution line length and power load also indicate that the adoption of solar PV independent power generation micro grid for electric universal service is always the most economical.This paper built the social welfare function of electric universal service from the perspective of demand side, and realized the social welfare measurement of electric universal service for inhabitants living in established area, which break through the limit of Arrow’s impossibility theorem, and solved the classical difficult issue of welfare economics. At the same time, it can provide reference for the effective implementation of public policy. This study has important theoretical value and practical significance, and the social welfare function construction mentality and method can also be applied to other fields. Under the background that the renewable energy power generation is currently developing rapidly, and a new round of power system reform is carried on, the optimization model of power supply mode and cost compensation incentive mechanism constructed in this paper also have important practical implication. However, in the future research, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research from the aspects of income compensation, power universal service fund and so on. The research of this paper can provide effective decision reference for the policy makers and practitioners in the field of electric universal service, and it has important significance to promote the sustainable development of China’s electric universal service industry, to realize the equalization of basic energy services, and to build a well-off society in an all-round way.