On June 18, 2026, the National Energy Administration officially implemented the new Guidelines for Assessing the Hosting Capacity of Power Systems for Distributed Power Supply Access, completely abolishing the rigid restriction of an "80% reverse transformer loading rate" that had been in place for six years. This move was of extraordinary significance: it broke the shackles on industry development, released trillion-level market potential, and marked the PV industry’s formal entry into a new stage of development with "no hard cap." The core of this new June 18 policy was "removing hard caps and adopting flexible regulation." This did not mean relaxing power grid safety requirements, but rather using a more scientific approach to balance safety and development.

On March 27, the main transformer expansion project of the first UHV project in Henan's power grid during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the 1000 kV South Henan UHV substation expansion project (hereinafter referred to as the "South Henan expansion project"), was started. The commissioning of the project will increase the power supply capacity by 50%, further improve the safe operation and power supply guarantee level of the power grid, and promote the green and low-carbon transformation of energy.

[Grain-Oriented Silicon Steel Prices Will Remain in a Consolidation Trend Next Week, with Limited Fluctuations] Market feedback indicated that the current core downstream demand mainly came from transformer manufacturing enterprises. Affected by the industry's traditional off-season, enterprises had weak purchase willingness and mostly adopted strategies of consuming their own inventory and making small-volume replenishments on demand. Acceptance of current prices remained stable, but there was a lack of momentum for large-scale procurement, resulting in relatively weak actual transaction performance for grain-oriented silicon steel. Due to inventory pressure on some specification resources, traders had limited room for slight discounts.

This week, the weekly operating rate of leading downstream aluminum processing enterprises in China rebounded 1.1 percentage points MoM to 64%.

[Market Participants Became More Rational in Sentiment, and Grain-Oriented Silicon Steel Prices May Fluctuate Rangebound Next Week] In terms of transactions, the procurement pace of end-use industries such as downstream transformers and power equipment slowed down, and purchase willingness remained cautious, with procurement mainly consisting of small-volume, as-needed restocking orders, while large-volume purchasing activity was scarce, resulting in relatively low actual market trading activity. In addition, resources from steel mills’ earlier directed orders arrived successively, and traders’ circulating inventory accumulated steadily. Some merchants offered slight price concessions to accelerate turnover and boost shipments, but the overall room for concessions remained limited and failed to effectively lift transactions.

According to SMM, supported by the pullback in copper prices, industry orders for enamelled wire improved, with the overall pace aligning with peak-season expectations. End-use demand recovered across the board, home appliance orders maintained peak-season performance, demand for power transformers remained steady, demand in the new energy sector gradually improved, and orders in traditional segments such as industrial motors and power tools also performed well. Against expectations of high production schedules among enterprises, the industry's operating rate is expected to continue rebounding to above 90%.