[insane_dreamer]

SFH's are rare in China outside the villages; big cities are all high-rises (in Beijing, and I believe other large cities, it's illegal to build SFH's within the city limits, though the few remaining "hutongs" are exempted for historical reasons)

[seanmcdirmid]

Yes, I think most of us know that, so I find the statement to be confusing that China is behind on personal solar. Of course they are! It is never going to be much of a thing as urbanization continues to accelerate, because people just don't live in those kinds of houses where you have your own roof to put solar panels on. You are much more likely to see community solar instead, or solar plants (along with wind farms) in western china sending energy to eastern china via transmission lines. And you better bet that in rural china the 农民 are using whatever free electricity they can get (I've seen water wheels in the weirdest of places).

When I lived in Beijing, the apartment buildings I lived in usually had solar hot water. Well, I could tell when they turned on the central heating plants for the winter because I finally had hot water showers again.

[insane_dreamer]

> When I lived in Beijing, the apartment buildings I lived in usually had solar hot water

was that recently? I lived there from 2011-2017 and solar power was virtually unheard of, much less powering any buildings. But yeah, China is that kind of place that the city decides when you get heating in your apartment (Nov 15 IIRC, so early Nov could be _really_ cold inside; we wore our coats).

[seanmcdirmid]

That was way back in 2008! Solar has been in China for a long time, but they were using it directly to warm the water, not via photovalic panels (which is why the results were so bad).

[insane_dreamer]

well, whatdoyouknow, maybe our apartment's water was indeed heated by solar and I just had no idea :)

[seanmcdirmid]

It’s hard to say. If they use photvalic instead of pure solar, they can top off a lack of sun with electricity from other sources to keep the hot water warm (outside of winter when it’s all natural gas based anyways). Ome would think they could do a better job with personal heat pumps.