Solar panels
In October of last year China's State Grid Company released a new policy encouraging solar grid connections for individual households. With a new warehouse in Shunyi, on the outskirts of Beijing, we here at Greenpeace East Asia decided to take advantage of this policy and have solar panels installed on the warehouse's rooftop. Our hope? To test just how easy (or hard) it is for Chinese individuals and business owners to switch to solar.
After a month and a half application process we were approved by the State Grid and successfully installed 65 square meters of solar panels. When operating to full capacity they will generate around 5 kWh of electricity per hour. By day's end – with clear weather - it will total around 25 kWh. To give you a sense of scale an average urban Chinese family consumes about 10 kWh per day. 
Solar panel owners are given options as to whether the energy their panels generate feeds back into the grid. We elected to consume electricity generated on-site with surplus fed back to grid, the most typical model. However the question of payment for this energy has yet to be adequately resolved. The government has said a dedicated price mechanism is in the works, but in its absence the price of every kilowatt hour generated by these solar panels is only on par with a much lower coal power price benchmark - about one third of that currently being offered to large concentrated solar farms (currently at 1 yuan/kWh). Our hopes are that the government will release a specific feed-in tariff as soon as possible to make the price rate of distributed solar at least on the same level as large solar farms.