The Shanghai Municipal Government plans to launch a pilot program in which local households with rooftop solar panels can sell some of the electricity they generate back to the power grid, local media reported Wednesday.
City officials announced the program Tuesday at a conference where they laid out other power-related plans, including the construction of a 200-megawatt solar power plant, according to a report in the Youth Daily.
So far, six households in Shanghai have installed rooftop solar panel systems since the State Grid Corporation of China released a document on October 26 that gave residents nationwide the ability to set up solar power generation equipment at their homes and sell the excess electricity back to the grid, the report said. Two of the households are in Songjiang district and the other four are in Minhang district.
Solar panel users can sell the electricity they generate to the power grid for 1 yuan ($0.16) per kilowatt-hour, more than the current local electricity price of 0.627 yuan per kilowatt-hour, said Dang Jihu, one of the residents who had the solar panels installed at his home.
The panels can generate an average of 270 kilowatt-hours of electricity every month, Dang said.
The Shanghai Energy Conservation Supervision Center estimated that local households use 150 kilowatt-hours of electricity on average each month, according to a report in the Xinmin Evening News in 2006.
