The Feed-In Tariff Stopped Being the Anchor

Household PV economics in China no longer revolve around a subsidised feed-in tariff. The national household benchmark fell from 0.37 RMB/kWh in 2018 to zero subsidy for new entrants, leaving surplus power priced at the local coal benchmark — 0.3783 RMB/kWh in southern Hebei, 0.4155 RMB/kWh in parts of Zhejiang, according to provincial development and reform commissions.
That single number reframes everything. A kilowatt-hour exported to the grid is worth roughly a third less than one consumed behind the meter and offset against a residential retail price of 0.52–0.58 RMB/kWh.
The gap is the whole business case now. Household PV stopped being an electricity-selling business and became a bill-reduction business — a distinction that changes module sizing, inverter choice and whether a battery belongs on the wall.

What a Household System Earns per Kilowatt-Hour

Revenue per kWh is not one number. It is a weighted blend of avoided retail purchase and exported energy, and the weights come from your load profile, not your roof.
The China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) reported module prices near 0.68 RMB/W at the end of 2024, down from about 1.6 RMB/W in 2020 — a 57% decline that cut system costs to 3.0–3.4 RMB/W for residential rooftop. BloombergNEF put global lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) pack prices at approximately USD 115/kWh in 2024, which is why storage options have moved from luxury to line item.
| Scheme | Effective revenue per kWh | Typical 20 kW capex | Simple payback (Hebei) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full export, no self-consumption | 0.378 RMB | 62,000 RMB | 8.6 years |
| 60% self-consumption, 40% export | 0.481 RMB | 62,000 RMB | 5.4 years |
| 60% self-consumption + 10 kWh LFP | 0.55 RMB blended | 90,000 RMB | 7.2 years |
| 85% self-consumption + 10 kWh LFP | 0.57 RMB blended | 90,000 RMB | 6.4 years |
Read the first two rows again. Identical hardware, identical irradiance, 27% difference in revenue. Self-consumption ratio is the highest- variable in the entire design — higher than module efficiency, higher than inverter topology.

Self-Consumption Ratio: The Number That Decides Payback

Measuring self-consumption starts with a fifteen-minute interval load profile from the utility meter. Ask for thirty days of data covering a winter month and a summer month; annual averages hide the seasonal mismatch that matters.
Northern households with coal-to-gas conversion or air-source heat pumps carry winter loads of 40–70 kWh/day, which aligns poorly with 60–80 kWh/day of summer PV yield. Households with daytime occupancy — home offices, retirees, small workshops — routinely hit 70–85% self-consumption on a 5–8 kW system without any storage.
Adding a 7 kW electric-vehicle charger changes the maths again. A vehicle parked from 19:00 to 07:00 consumes almost nothing during generation hours unless charging is shifted to weekends or a midday tariff window exists.
Oversizing the array is the most common design error I see. A 15 kW array on a household with a 4,000 kWh annual demand and no storage pushes self-consumption below 35%, and the marginal kilowatt earns the export price. Size to the load first, then to the roof.

Document 136 and Market Pricing: What Changed in 2025

In February 2025 the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration issued Document 136, moving new renewable capacity — including distributed household systems above a threshold — toward market-based pricing with a mechanism price floor set per province.
The practical effect for households is regional divergence. Shandong, with 2024 midday spot prices frequently at or below zero during high-PV hours, now signals that unconstrained export earns less than the coal benchmark on sunny spring days. Guangdong and Zhejiang, with tighter supply-demand balance and higher retail tariffs, retain stronger export value.
Location is now a pricing decision, not just an irradiance decision. Two identical 10 kW systems, one in Jinan and one in Foshan, can differ by 30% in lifetime revenue. Check the provincial spot-market price curve for midday hours before assuming the benchmark tariff holds.

When Storage Actually Pays for Itself

Storage earns money two ways in a household: by converting low-value export into high-value avoided purchase, and by arbitraging time-of-use (TOU) tariffs where peak rates exceed 1.0 RMB/kWh — as in parts of Zhejiang and Guangdong.
A 10 kWh LFP system cycling 300 times per year at 90% depth of discharge delivers roughly 2,700 kWh of shifted energy. At a 0.20 RMB/kWh spread between export and avoided purchase, that is 540 RMB annually — not enough to justify a 25,000–30,000 RMB battery on arbitrage alone.
The justification is different: capacity charges on three-phase connections, backup during outages, and export limitation where the local transformer is saturated. In more than 200 counties, distributed PV hosting capacity is exhausted and export is curtailed to zero at midday, which changes the battery from optional to structural. A hybrid inverter with a lithium battery configured for zero-export shifting typically reaches 85% self-consumption.

A 20 kW Hebei Project, Line by Line

A 20 kW residential installation in southern Hebei, commissioned in March 2024, uses 36 monocrystalline n-type modules rated 560 W, a 20 kW three-phase hybrid inverter, and a 10 kWh LFP cabinet.
Capex: 3.15 RMB/W for PV, or 63,000 RMB, plus 27,000 RMB for storage — 90,000 RMB total. Measured first-year yield: 23,600 kWh, or 1,180 kWh/kW, consistent with a capacity factor near 13.5%.
Load: 9,800 kWh annually, of which 61% falls inside generation hours. Self-consumed energy: 14,400 kWh. Exported: 9,200 kWh. Avoided purchase at 0.56 RMB/kWh yields 8,064 RMB; export at 0.3783 RMB/kWh yields 3,480 RMB. Gross annual revenue: 11,544 RMB, plus 1,100 RMB from evening battery discharge displacing peak-rate imports.
Simple payback on the PV-only portion: 5.4 years. Full system including storage: approximately 7.1 years. Degradation at 0.5%/year against a 25-year warranty to 84.8% of nameplate keeps the back half of the curve profitable, though inverter replacement around year 12 should be budgeted at 2,500–3,500 RMB.

Equipment Choices That Move the Numbers

Module choice matters less than it used to. The spread between tier-one and tier-two modules is under 0.06 RMB/W, roughly 1.5% of system cost, while the spread in annual degradation (0.4% versus 0.7%) compounds to 7% of lifetime yield. Buy on the warranty document, not the datasheet headline. Comparison of n-type TOPCon and p-type PERC is available in the solar panel range.
Inverter selection carries more risk than most buyers expect. A single-MPPT (maximum power point tracker) unit on a roof with two orientations — east-west split, or a dormer shading one string — loses 6–12% annually. Dual-MPPT hardware costs about 300 RMB more. Read the sizing guidance for string and hybrid units before committing.
Balance-of-system (BOS) quality determines failure rates. DC isolators, MC4 connectors and cable UV rating are where 80% of callbacks originate. Monitoring with per-string current logging turns a silent 15% string loss into a same-day service ticket.

Rules Before You Sign

1. Get thirty days of interval load data and compute self-consumption before sizing the array; refuse any proposal that sizes on roof area alone.
2. Confirm in writing which tariff applies to export, and whether your county sits on a constrained hosting list that permits zero export at midday.
3. Specify dual-MPPT inverters for any roof with two orientations or partial shade, and require per-string monitoring.
4. Treat storage as a curtailment and backup solution first, an arbitrage play second; verify the TOU spread in your province exceeds 0.6 RMB/kWh before buying on economics.
5. Budget inverter replacement at year 12 and demand a 25-year linear performance warranty of 84.8% or better.
Send your last twelve months of electricity bills and a roof photo to our engineering team through the contact page, and we will return a self-consumption estimate and a modelled twenty-five-year cash flow within three working days. Project references at similar scale are catalogued in our project library.