CHANGZHOU, China, Nov. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On November 5, Changzhou’s first whole-village photovoltaic (PV) project was officially commissioned in Heshu Village, Lijia Town, Wujin District. Rooftops of 40 households and the village’s corridors accommodate a total of 1.08 MW of PV capacity, yet from a distance, almost no trace of the installation can be seen.
This “invisibility” is by design. Heshu Village’s rural houses were delivered under unified planning and construction in November 2022. The village is a pilot for Jiangsu Province’s homestead system reform and a national demonstration village for rural governance. Its neat eaves and ample rooftop area provided favorable conditions for whole-village PV development, while also imposing higher requirements on construction.
For the two housing types of 140 square meters and 90 square meters, the contractor designed customized layouts of 36 and 25 modules respectively, with PV panels laid along the roof slope. In conventional practice, the gap between PV panels and tiles is about 20 centimeters; in Heshu Village, it was reduced to 12 centimeters. Down-conductors are routed neatly along walls, so the rooftops look flat from afar and the layout appears orderly up close, without disrupting the original contours of the houses.
“From a distance, it looks like village scenery; only up close can you tell it is a PV power station,” said Zhang Xiongwei, project contact person at State Grid Changzhou Power Supply Company. He explained that, in line with Heshu Village’s Jiangnan water-town character of white walls and dark tiles, the project follows the original roof contours and uses black, low-reflection PV modules so that the PV equipment blends into the rooftops. Power supporting equipment is painted or decorated with colored drawings to fit the surrounding village landscape and merge into the village’s appearance.
According to estimates, the whole-village PV project generates about 1.18 million kWh of electricity annually, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 360 ordinary households, and can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 700 tons per year. With green benefits secured, the question is how to divide the economic returns. Heshu Village adopted a model of “government promotion, grid support, state-owned enterprise demonstration, village committee organization, and resident benefits”: the state-owned platform Wujin Digital Energy is responsible for investment, construction, and operation and maintenance, and pays rent to residents and the village committee; the village committee convenes general meetings of property owners to promptly respond to residents’ concerns and organize contract signing; and Changzhou Power Supply Company is responsible for technical guidance and the connection of supporting power facilities.
Residents only need to provide their rooftops and can receive a cumulative rooftop rental income of about 33,000 yuan over 20 years. In addition to a three-year roof waterproofing insurance, State Grid Changzhou Power Supply Company has also introduced Yingda Insurance to provide a seven-year extended warranty service. The village collective receives rent for the PV corridors, as well as incentives that give back to rural development, such as village street lighting, Party-building publicity sites, and convenient service venues. The investor earns returns through power generation, with an investment payback period of about 11 years. The project adopts a connection scheme of “800 V low-voltage collection and 10 kV medium-voltage grid connection,” significantly improving power quality and supply reliability and markedly enhancing the project’s ability to interact with the power grid.
The 2026 No. 1 Central Document proposed “advancing the construction of livable, workable, and beautiful villages in accordance with local conditions,” and the National Energy Administration requires “guiding the scientific layout and orderly development of rural distributed PV according to grid carrying capacity.” Heshu Village’s exploration is precisely the implementation of this guidance at the village level. In the future, Changzhou will also explore promoting the simultaneous design and integrated construction of rural self-renewal housing and PV, so that such village landscapes can take root in more rural areas.
