CN: Beijing Distributed Solar Photovoltaic Scale?Up Project

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The development objective of the Beijing Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Scale-Up (Sunshine Schools) Project for China are to increase the share of clean energy in electricity consumption and to demonstrate the viability of the renewable energy service company model for scaling up the deployment of rooftop solar photovoltaic systems in schools and other educational institutions in Beijing municipality. The project has following two components: (1) sunshine schools program support - installation of 100 megawatt (MW) rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in Beijing. This component will install 100 MW of distributed rooftop PV systems in about 800 schools and other educational institutions in Beijing under the Renewable Energy Service Company (RESCO) model for large-scale rooftop solar PV deployment. Similar to the Energy Service Company (ESCO) business model adopted by the central government as a key market mechanism to scale up energy efficiency investments, the RESCO will take the performance and financial risk of the investment by signing an energy service performance contract (ESPC) with each school and university, which will pay the RESCO only for the solar PV electricity it consumes. The Bank loan will be on-lent to the RESCO by the Beijing municipality; and (2) technical assistance (TA) for developing local capacity for scaling up solar energy deployment, project implementation, and other priority energy policy initiatives of the Beijing Municipal Government (BMG). TA activities include: (i) demonstration of the RESCO model for large-scale grid-connected rooftop solar PV deployment in Beijing municipality, provision of engineering and technical support in relation to PV systems to Yuanshen Company, and independent monitoring and evaluation of implementation and results of such model; (ii) demonstration of two-way metering in Beijing municipality; (iii) establishment of an online monitoring system for rooftop PV systems and a solar energy information portal in Beijing municipality; and (iv) improvement of renewable energy education in schools and other educational institutions in Beijing municipality.