The new round of electricity market reform in 2015 completely changed the profit pattern of power grid enterprises (PGEs) in China, and directly affected their investment plans. Under the new electricity market reform (NEMR), the government regulatory authority made higher requirements for the investment efficiency of PGEs, and the investment effectiveness hence became the core criterion for investment plans. Therefore, the PGEs are now attaching great importance to the investment efficiency. According to their geographical differences, this paper divides the Chinese provincial PGEs into three groups, namely eastern, central and western region enterprises. Based on the NEMR, we developed an evaluation system of investment efficiency for the above-mentioned enterprises. Moreover, this paper selects GDP per capita, electricity consumption in industry, and electrification rate as external environment variables, and conducts an empirical research on the investment efficiency of 31 provincial PGEs in China in 2017. The analysis reveals that three external environment variables have considerable impacts on the investment efficiency. Though the increase of GDP per capita and electricity consumption in industry are not conducive to improving investment efficiency, the advancement of electrification plays a positive role in its improvement. And from the real efficiency results, Tianjin, Liaoning, Jiangsu, and Fujian have relatively higher investment efficiency, while Henan, Shandong, and Shanghai exhibit lower investment efficiency. By comparing the investment efficiency of PGEs in the first and third stage, conclusions can be drawn that in the first stage the investment efficiency of PGEs was overestimated, and the inefficient investments prevailed some provincial PGEs, which caused by low scale efficiency.

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The three-stage DEA model was applied to study the investment efficiency of a power grid enterprise (PGE) under the reform of electricity transmission and distribution price. This research indicates that environmental variables, including GDP Per Capita and the proportion of industrial power consumption, have a significant impact on the investment efficiency of PGE. To be specific, GDP Per Capita and the proportion of industrial power consumption have a positive influence on the investment efficiencies of PGE in this research. Without environmental variables and random errors, the main reason for the low investment efficiencies of PGE was the lack of scale efficiency. In order to improve its investment efficiency, PGE should attach great significance to economies of scale and a reasonable plan of the enterprise scale.