Abstract: China's electricity consumption has experienced an over-expected growth since the 13th Five-Year Plan period due to complicated factors. It is of great significance for the high-quality development of the power industry to deeply analyze the reasons of the rapid growth of power consumption, the influencing factors of medium-and long-term power demand, and scientifically forecast the trend of electricity demand growth. Based on the analysis of the reasons of the growth of electricity consumption during the 13th Five-Year Plan, this paper comprehensively considers the main factors affecting the medium-and long-term electricity demand under the new situations, and then adopts the medium-and long-term model to forecast the electricity demand from 2020 to 2050 in China. It is estimated that with the consideration of the accelerated electrification scenario, the electricity demand will reach to 7 700, 11 100, 12 200, and 13 900 TW·h in 2020, 2030, 2035, and 2050, respectively; and the average annual growth rates will be 6.1%, 3.1%, and 0.9% in 2015-2020, 2020-2035, and 2035-2050, respectively. In 2050, the electricity will account for about 45.2% in the terminal energy consumption.

Key words: 13th Five-Year Plan period, power planning, electricity consumption, influencing factors, medium- and long-term perspective, scenario analysis