Cooperative mechanisms for shared power equipment warehousing among new energy power generation enterprises in China’s new power system: A study based on a quantum game theory approach

Large-scale cooperation among new energy power generation enterprises to jointly establish shared warehousing can significantly reduce power equipment warehousing costs and enhance emergency response capacity. However, due to the competitive nature of technology secrecy and trust deficits, such enterprises often fall into a “prisoner’s dilemma,” hindering true large-scale cooperation. While the infinitely repeated game (Folk Theorem) in classical game theory theoretically resolves the “prisoner’s dilemma,” in practice, enterprises can hardly establish long-term, stable repeated relationships for shared warehousing, which limits its feasibility. To resolve this practical dilemma, this study introduces quantum game theory and constructs a quantum game model for shared warehousing cooperation among new energy power generation enterprises, aiming to achieve cooperation in a single round. Through theoretical derivation and numerical simulation, this study finds: (1) With maximum objective entanglement, if one enterprise adopts a fully quantum strategy, the other needs to employ it only with a cooperative tendency for the single-round quantum game to reach a unique Nash equilibrium and Pareto optimal point. (2) Further evolutionary game analysis indicates that, based on this, the evolution of the industry group also invariably exhibits a unique Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS): full-scale cooperation across all participants. Based on these findings, this study proposes: (1) Enterprises should strengthen strategic mutual trust by signing “entanglement contracts”; (2) Smart logistics technologies should be vigorously applied to achieve “entanglement” at the data level; (3) Industry-level platform development should be strengthened; and (4) Governments and the State Grid Corporation should provide proactive guidance. This study not only offers new pathways for cost reduction and efficiency enhancement in the new energy power generation sector at the logistics level but, more importantly, also reveals that quantum game theory—as a novel cooperative mechanism beyond classical game frameworks—provides a revolutionary theoretical perspective and methodological approach for addressing the “trust deficit” challenge in real-world economic management.