IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2015 - 44

Table 2. The Implementation result of the Township rural electrification Program:
Solar PV Power Stations and Solar PV/Wind hybrid Power Stations.
The Quantity
of Power Stations

Total Installed
Capacity (kWp)

The Number of
Households Benefited

The Number of
People Benefited

Tibet autonomous
region (AR)

329

6,763

28,966

141,635

Xinjiang AR

159

2,378

18,416

105,887

Qinghai Province

112

2,715

8,640

40,650

Sichuan Province

1,817

5,500

24,900

Inner Mongolia AR

752

2,840

11,369

Gansu Province

995

4,164

37,942

Shaanxi Province

100

520

1,856

Hunan Province

100

420

Total

721

15,540

69,147

340,395

Province

Source: Shyu, 2012.

generation in rural areas by supporting small home solar PV
systems from a few to tens of watts. Stand-alone systems
have been mostly used in remote areas in north and northwest China, where the extension of the main grid is too costly
or difficult. PV systems have been used in these areas since
mid-1990. A recent report from the World Bank provides
details about renewable energy in China, claiming that two
million people in western China are receiving electricity
through PV systems.
In 2002, the Township Electrification Program was initiated by the State Development and Planning Commission.
This program was designed for the poorer, less capable of
paying population in rural areas in western China, with a
goal of 100 W per person. This is one of the largest renewable
energy-based rural electrification programs in the world
(Table 2 and Figure 7).
In 2011, the vast majority of China's solar PV installations were grid connected, but some 20 MW were in off-grid
and other isolated applications. By 2012, 65.6-GW small
hydro stations were installed in China. By 2010, China had
430.94 MW installed capacity of stand-alone small wind

turbines, and this number is expected to reach 997 MW by
2015 and 2,955 MW by 2020. In recent years, about 2 million
household biogas digesters have been newly built.
In rural counties, biomass has been promoted and
widely used for cooking and heating. Biogas is a combustible mixture of gases produced when livestock manure
and biological waste ferment in air-tight containers. The
major constituents of biogas are methane (CH4, 60% or
more by volume) and carbon dioxide (CO2, about 35%)
plus small amounts of water vapor, hydrogen sulphide
(H2S), carbon monoxide (CO), and nitrogen (N2) (Figure 8).
The largest chicken waste biogas energy plant in China,
the Minhe Biogas project, stands 6 km south of Penglai City,
Shandong Province, which is also home to the biggest stud
and meat chicken farm in China, Shandong Minhe Livestock
Co. The Minhe Biogas project has a 3-MW biogas generation
plant under the World Bank Clean Development Mechanism
(CDM) project. The plant features three of GE's 1-MW JMS320
Jenbacher engines, which generate electricity for the local
grid. The site's new biogas plant features an anaerobic digester system that consumes 300 t of manure and 500 t of waste-

Figure 7. The people of Inner Mongolia are turning to new technologies like solar power to solve the problem. (Source: World Bank.)

Figure 8. The Shandong Minhe 3-MW biogas plant (phase I). (Photo
courtesy of Shandong Minhe Animal Husbandry Co., http://www.minhe.cn/.)

I E E E E l e c t r i f i c ati o n M agaz ine / March 2015

http://www.minhe.cn/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2015