Shi Mei and her husband earn a decent enough living by growing corn and millet on their small farm in eastern China’s Shandong province. In 2021, they diversified by investing in solar energy — signing a contract to mount some 40 panels on their roof to feed energy to the grid.
Now, the couple get paid for every watt of electricity they generate, harvesting the equivalent of $10,000 per year that Shi can track through an app on her phone.
“When the sun comes out, you make money,” Shi said.
The Shi family is on the leading edge of a solar boom in China, which has long dominated global solar manufacturing but didn’t always install a lot of it at home. That’s changing as the government focuses on the urgency of cutting its worst-in-the-world
