Page 24 - Read Online

Page 6 of 17 Zhen et al. Carbon Footprints 2024;3:7 https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/cf.2023.50

Table 1. Selected characteristics of the interviewed households and villages
No. of
Item Definition Response Percentage/%
respondents
Installation Whether distributed PV is installed Installed 61 42.66
situation
Not 82 57.34
installed
Household Annual income situation 0-50 66 46.15
income
50-100 55 38.46
(Unit: 1,000 yuan)
100-200 17 11.89
200-300 4 2.80
over 300 1 0.70
Neighbor Is there a neighborhood with distributed PV Installed 104 82.54
Not 22 17.46
installed
Subsidies Is there any government subsidy Yes 45 31.47
No 98 68.53
College Does the village cadre include college-graduate village officials or Yes 8 30.77
selected students
No 18 69.23
Policy install Are there policy documents to support or guide the development of Yes 10 38.46
PV technology
No 16 61.54

households use the tilted roof photovoltaic mode, while 29.5% and 32.8% of households use horizontal roof
and flat-to-slope photovoltaic modes, respectively [Figure 3A].

Furthermore, 86.9% of photovoltaic equipment consists of high-efficiency monocrystalline silicon or
polycrystalline silicon modules [Figure 3B], contributing to a total annual power generation of 1.132 million
kilowatt-hours. Among the surveyed households, 15.2% generate power of 10,000 kilowatt-hours or less and
6.5% exceed 50,000 kilowatt-hours annually [Figure 3C]. The power generation efficiency of distributed PV
equipment can be affected by excessively small or large tilt angles of photovoltaic panels. Generally, the
recommended tilt angle for photovoltaic equipment is equal to the regional latitude. Shandong Province is
situated within the latitude range of 30-40° N, but our survey shows that 39.0% of the photovoltaic
equipment has an inclination angle between 30-50°, and 57.6% has an inclination angle of less than 30°
[Figure 3D]. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the installation inclination angle for the
distributed photovoltaic equipment.

Adoption modes for distributed PV
According to our survey, there are three kinds of adoption modes for distributed PV, namely resident-led
mode, enterprise-led mode, and village-led mode [Figure 4].

54.1% of the households choose the resident-led mode, where both enterprises and households play a
significant role. Under this installation mode, residents seek installation services from enterprises, and
residents bear the costs and benefits. This mode offers residents full autonomy in using distributed PV, but
it also places significant economic pressure on them. Compared to the other two modes, there is a higher
likelihood of encountering challenges in ensuring regular on-site maintenance of photovoltaic devices and
equipment.

41.0% of the households adopt the enterprise-led mode, which can be further divided into two types. One is
where residents bear the installation costs and enjoy the electricity generation returns, and the other is