Sustainable PV projects called for in rural areas

Photovoltaic (PV) poverty alleviation projects are among the solar-energy projects that will receive government subsidies in 2019, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said on Monday.

The NEA also said distributed PV power stations and ground power stations will use a bidding method to receive subsidies, except for poverty alleviation projects, household use and special PV projects.

Solar energy has become a vital force in China’s poverty alleviation work, with the industry scale surpassing 7 million kilowatts in 471 national-level poverty-stricken counties since the government launched PV poverty alleviation projects in 2015, the Economic Information Daily reported in January.

PV is a great industry to fight poverty because it can bring long-term stable incomes to local villagers, said Han Xiaoping, chief analyst at energy industry website china5e.com.

“Farmers are both electricity buyers and sellers in those areas. The electricity generated could be sold to the grid and the intelligent system would distribute the profits automatically,” Han said. He has proposed putting blockchain technology into PV projects in China’s rural areas to solve the problem of unfair profit distribution.

Lin Boqiang, a professor at Xiamen University in East China’s Fujian Province, noted a problem is that some farmers sell all the electricity to grid companies. That is not healthy for the PV energy sector’s development, and the definition of villages that need such PV projects should be clearer.