A minor cut in electricity prices can save industrial consumers a lot of cash. And in Southern China's Yunnan Province, a pilot electricity program is bringing big benefits to local companies.

Yunnan Aluminum is Yunnan Province's biggest electricity consumer, with total electricity use of more than 16 billion kilowatt hours in 2015. Thanks to the pilot program, Yunnan Aluminum saw its power costs reduced from 0.51 yuan to 0.36 yuan per kilowatt hour. That was a savings of more than one billion yuan.

"If there's no such reform in the electricity price, and it was kept at the original level. Our current revenue would not increase, but may drop obviously," said Yu Jilin, vice president of Yunnan Aluminum Co. Ltd..

Yu says electricity accounts for about 42 percent of the company's costs. The price reform helped Yunnan Aluminium avoid large staff cuts last year amid gloomy economic circumstances.

The National Development and Reform Commission says its calculations show that there's nearly 5.6 billion yuan of space for power price cuts in the five pilot provinces. And with an expansion of the program to other regions, more companies will benefit.