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The REDP survey featured a contingent valuation study across a smaller respondent pool of 372 non-SHS users including those who have never owned an SHS and those who are former users. Almost 90% of surveyed non-users indicated willingness to pay ceilings of RMB 1,000 or lower for PV products in excess of RMB 10,000.50 Respondents stated that government subsidies were a necessary but still insufficient condition for system purchase. When the same question was asked about products exceeding RMB 1,000, 97% of the 182 respondents stated a WTP of RMB 500 or lower. This contrasts with the average REDP sale of an 18–25Wp SHS to either an animal herder or farmer at RMB 700– 1,000.51 Figure 12 depicts the average selling price of an SHS over time, with the 40Wp and 50Wp systems seeing the largest 2002–2007 price reductions, at 35% and 24% respectively. To supplement the Bank’s own evaluation, we interviewed end users in selected areas of Qinghai province, including Dulan County, Henan County, and Zekog County. They are primarily nomadic herders with at least one household member spending summer months in the hills. More often than not they had never heard of REDP since the retailers themselves did not advertise the sys-
tems as part of the REDP scheme. Compared with results from the 2007 survey, responses we received by interviewing end users were consistent for some questions and divergent for others. For example, our interviewees expressed significantly lower interest in listening to the radio and stated greater benefits of SHS ownership through lighting and electricity for mechanical milk separators like those in Figure 13. In contrast, the ICR states that butter separators were present in only 1% of households surveyed in 2007, or 15% as per a similar survey conducted in Qinghai, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Endusers would typically not carry out maintenance on their panels which were by and large positioned near the entrance of their house at an angle. We saw no units using azimuthal tracking nor did herders discuss changing the panel’s orientation to increase its ouput efficiency. In the site areas we visited, PV adoption was near universal though not all units were operational. Households with SHSs in poor condition cited various reasons for postponing maintenance and repair. One user told us that wind had blown away and broken his household’s panel which had powered their TV and lighting for the previous seven years. Because Xining was the nearest location for repairs (yet still a day’s journey by
Figure 12: Average SHS prices across time, in real RMB (2002) Source: World Bank 2010.