The General Office of the National Development and Reform Commission ("NDRC") has recently distributed the Circular on Matters Concerning Clearing up and Standardizing Fees Charged for Power Grids and the Transfer of Power Supplies (the "Circular").
The Circular proposes to abolish fees charged by power grid enterprises for some monopolistic services, thoroughly clear up and standardize unreasonable markups during the transfer of power supplies, and accelerate implementing policies that have been rolled out to clear up power grid fees. It is made clear in the Circular that certain fees, including the fee for occupying the transformer substation bay, the fee for calibration of measurement devices and the fee for power load management terminals, charged by power grid enterprises from power consumers will be canceled; what will also be cancelled include the nominal fee for additionally applied power cards, the electricity recovery fee, the transfer fee for name changes, etc., as these services may be included into basic services for power supplies, and other monopolistic fees for services similar to these will be scrapped as well. Furthermore, the Circular notes that if the power grid enterprise has offered the calibration of measurement devices and the electricity recovery services for three times to a power consumer, which are not attributed to causes by the power grid enterprise, the power consumer shall bear relevant expenses.