Professional O&M and Value-Added Development for County-Level Photovoltaic Poverty Alleviation Assets

📌 Background

By 2026, China's existing photovoltaic (PV) power plant capacity has reached nearly 1TW, with a large number of poverty alleviation and distributed power plants connected to the grid between 2018 and 2022 entering a period of efficiency decline. According to the National Energy Administration, as of the end of 2025, the national installed capacity of PV power generation reached 1.2 billion kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 35%. In March 2026, six departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the 'Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Comprehensive Utilization of Photovoltaic Modules,' proposing that the cumulative volume of comprehensive module utilization reach 250,000 tons by 2027, driving a simultaneous rise in demand for decommissioning and O&M at the county level.

👤 Target Customers

County-level governments (Rural Revitalization Bureaus/Development and Reform Commissions), village collective PV cooperatives, and small-scale industrial and commercial PV investors.

💰 Revenue Streams

1) Basic O&M fees charged monthly or per watt (typically 0.04-0.08 RMB/W/year); 2) A-la-carte billing for value-added services such as cleaning, precision testing, module replacement, and decommissioning coordination; 3) Revenue sharing from bundling VCS/CCER carbon credits for owners in partnership with carbon asset management firms.

🧮 Cost Structure

Recruitment and training of localized O&M personnel, leasing or purchasing of drones and thermal imaging equipment, regional warehouse spare parts costs, and travel and local transportation expenses.

🛡️ Moat

Establishing high-density, centralized localized barriers within specific county regions; possessing precise operational data of local power plants for predictive maintenance; deep integration with local PV poverty alleviation systems to secure exclusive operating rights.

🔑 Keys to Success

• Cultivate localized O&M teams and bundle services with local cooperatives
• Develop monitoring apps tailored for small, fragmented power plants to enable immediate response to detected issues
• Collaborate with carbon trading institutions to achieve carbon development outcomes through routine O&M

⚠️ Risks

• Fiscal gap risks caused by the reduction or exemption of O&M fees in impoverished counties
• Major equipment downtime compensation risks due to misjudgments by intelligent predictive models
• Environmental risks associated with the storage of decommissioned PV modules due to a lack of recycling and processing channels

🏢 Cases

• Dayu County introduced professional third-party O&M for 142 PV poverty alleviation power plants with a total capacity of 45.5 MW, reducing village-level costs by 6% and generating over 120 million RMB in total power revenue from 2021-2025
• PV power plants adopting AI health monitoring technology can reduce O&M costs by 30% and increase annual power generation efficiency by 2%-5%

📊 SWOT Analysis