Equivalence of Rights and Responsibilities in Capacity Mechanisms Under Cross‐Provincial Electricity Trading: Problem Analysis and Improvement

Cross‐provincial electricity trading in China expands the spatial scope of resource allocation and allows the adequacy benefits provided by provincial capacity mechanisms to extend beyond local jurisdictions. However, the costs of such mechanisms are still largely recovered within the provinces where they are implemented, giving rise to cross‐provincial cost leakage and a mismatch between the beneficiaries of capacity adequacy and the entities bearing the associated costs. This mismatch distorts market incentives and weakens the effectiveness of long‐term supply adequacy signals in cross‐provincial trading. To address this issue, this paper reveals the formation mechanism of the rights–responsibilities mismatch in capacity mechanisms under coupled cross‐provincial electricity trading and analyzes its critical impact on market incentive signals and power supply security. Based on this analysis, an improvement scheme for fairer capacity cost allocation is proposed, which is compatible with the current market operation environment. The proposed scheme corrects cross‐provincial market incentive signals by allowing capacity costs to be transmitted to external beneficiaries that actually receive adequacy support through cross‐provincial transactions, thereby achieving a cross‐provincial match between costs and benefits. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method improves the fairness of capacity cost sharing and mitigates distorted trading incentives. This study provides a useful reference for the design and operation of cross‐provincial electricity markets in the presence of non‐localised capacity adequacy benefits.