(Yicai Global) July 5 -- Many small hydropower station owners are selling their plants on China’s used-good platforms due to the difficulty in breaking even and increased pressure from regulators over their environmental impact, and not because of a recent clampdown on Bitcoin mining that has cut off an important source of income, according to Yicai Global research.

A number of privately-owned hydropower plants, with an installed capacity of under 50,000 kilowatts, are up for sale on Alibaba Group Holding’s secondhand e-marketplace Xianyu. They are mostly located in water-rich southwestern Sichuan and Yunnan provinces as well as the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

One seller, Zhang Huifu, bought a 9,000 kW hydropower station in Sichuan for CNY80 million (USD12.4 million) in 2011. He makes over CNY1 million (USD155,000) a year by selling electricity to the State Grid and local Bitcoin miners. However, in over ten years he has yet to break even.

"China Southern Power Grid buys electricity at CNY0.26 (USD0.04) per kilowatt hour, and the price for Bitcoin miners is CNY0.32," he said.

In May, the Financial Stability and Development Committee of the State Council called for a crackdown on Bitcoin mining to rein in risks. Since then, the main mining areas of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, northwestern Qinghai province and Sichuan have shut their cryptocurrency mines down, despite their enormous power consumption being a huge source of income for these remote areas.

Li Chengming told Yicai Global he wants to sell his 200 kW power plant in Liuzhou, Guangxi because he no longer wants to operate it, despite it giving him a stable income of tens of thousands of US dollars a year. “People call me every day," Li said. "But very few people come to see it."

“It’s a lonely life working at a hydroelectric station," Li said. "Its hard to find staff as many small stations only need one person to man it, but no one wants to stay alone in such a remote place all year round," he added.

China now has an oversupply of electricity. Last year, the volume of excess water released by hydropower stations could have generated 30.1 billion kWh of electricity. Regulators have also started to clean up the many small hydropower plants along the Yangtze River that were built without proper approvals and that are harming the environment. One fifth of the 5,025 small hydropower stations in Sichuan were told to shut last year.

Editors: Liao Shumin, Kim Taylor