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2017 turns out to be a bumper year for PV power generation in China, whose PV power output soared by 72% year-on-year to 106.9 billion kilowatts/hour, breaking the 100 billion mark for the first time, raising its share in overall power output by 0.7 of a percentage point, according to statistics released by the National Energy Administration on Jan. 2.
Of the amount, centralized type accounts for 93.2 billion kilowatts/hour, compared with 13.7 billion kilowatts for distributed type. As of the end of Nov. 2017, accumulated PV power capacities in China hit 125.79 million kilowatts, 67% more than a year earlier, for 7.5% of China's total power capacities, up 2.7 percentage points year-on-year.
The National Energy Administration points out that development of China's PV power generation manifested three features in 2017: first, phenomenal growth of distributed PV power generation: new distributed capacities topped 17.23 million kilowatts/hour in the first 11 months, up 3.7 times year-on-year; second, shift of the focus of new capacities to central and eastern China, away from northwestern region whose share of overall new capacities plunged by 17 percentage points year-on-year during the period; third, remarkable progress of PV power technology, driving down generation cost, which has induced constant reduction in the target rates for PV power projects worldwide.
An official in charge at the new energy department of the National Energy Administration points out that 106.9 billion kilowatts/hour of PV power generation in 2017 substituted for the use of 33 million tons of standard coal, cutting CO2 emission by 93 million tons.
(Photo courtesy of pixabay.)