China has been striving to develop renewable energy and has obtained initial effects. He Yong-shen, the head of State Grid Corporation of China’s Department of Development and Strategy Planning said that electricity generated from grid-connected wind and solar facilities has exceed 100GW, a capacity that is more than power generated by nuclear facilities.
At the 8th China New Energy International Forum held on June 7th and 8th in Beijing, He said that development of renewable energy in China has entered into a new stage. Involving 75GW of wind power and 15GW of solar power, the grid-connected renewable power in China has already reached 100GW and the total capacity has surpassed nuclear power this May. Renewable energy therefore became the third power resource in China.
China focuses on centralizing wind energy facility development in northern Shaanxi province (northern China). Solar installations, in contrast, are developed in centralized and distributed ways. In spite of large-scale PV power plants built in the Western Area, the Chinese government is now promoting rooftop distributed PV generation along the Eastern coast.
Coordinating with China’s central policies, the State Grid Corporation develops renewable energy through several approaches. On one hand, it works to strengthen infrastructures of power grids and grid-connection; on the other, it emphasizes on optimizing green power deployment. The Corporation has invested around RMB 4 billion to encourage grid innovation, R&D and test centers. It also invested more than RMB 75.5 billion to help optimize power deployment to balance power resources, peak and off-peak power consumptions, and the electricity gap between the eastern and western areas.
“State Grid will keep supporting distributed PV generation,” added He at the Forum. “We will also launch some MW-scale power transmission plans.”