China encourages distributed power generation

• 11 years ago (2013-03-02)
• David Flin

Asia 848 North America 998 Renewables 751

---

The State Grid Corporation of China, the country’s largest energy distributor, is taking further steps to facilitate the use of distributed power generation.

The State Grid said that households and individual companies will not only be allowed to use power generation to provide themselves with power, but will also be given permission to sell extra power to the State Grid. According to a SGCC guideline, the State Grid will introduce more distributed generation fuelled by solar energy, wind, natural gas, biomass energy, geothermal energy, and oceanic energy into its own network. However, the procedure for building such a plant is currently complicated. The price that the extra power produced can be sold to the grid is also uncertain. Yuan Jian, Deputy Marketing Director of Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Company, said: “Generally speaking, the government hasn’t given a specific explanation on what exactly the price of self-generated power should be. I don’t think it will be complicated. Because the electricity meter will count, the numbers won’t lie. As soon as the price is decided, the applicants can enjoy the subsidy. I think the policy can be out very soon, because now that the government has decided to support this industry, related policies will be ready soon.

Sun Zhengling, Spokesperson for the State Grid, said that the Chinese government should put more effort into providing supportive policy and service for individual small-scale power generation builders. He said: “Currently, most of the distributed power plants can enjoy subsidies from the government. However, subsidy policies are made for big enterprises with large-scale power generation. It’s complicated. That is why the small-scale power plants find it hard to get involved. We suggest the central government can make some adjustment as soon as possible in terms of the subsidy application procedure.”