At this year’s SNEC event, insiders from PV industry commonly held a negative opinion on China’s 8GW target of distributed PV generation (DG) installation. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to combine the government’s subsidies, rooftop resources and commercial modes for further promotions.
A Chinese online media reported that Chinese PV industry doesn’t thoroughly regard the 8GW target as a likely result. To build DG systems, it takes cooperation between financing, rooftop resources and reliable business models, yet all these aspects are not perfectly established in China. To Chinese manufacturers, therefore, ground-mounted PV systems with stable ROI and business models are more attractive. New subsidy programs unveiled from central and local governments can’t persuade roof owners into installing DG systems. Instead, better promotion strategies are more plausible to integrate the essential resources, and this is the key to massive installation.
Some PV industry workers even forecast that there would only be 1GW of DG installation this year, said PV-Tech in a report, and the rest 13GW would be replaced by ground-mounted PV system. It is out of question that China will be 2014’s largest PV market in the world. However, National Energy Administration’s target may be adjusted around mid-2014 according to conclusion of trials in the first half of this year.
Still, the Chinese government will reinforce to implement its national target of 8GW. With such a high target and few installations during the first six months, some manufacturers expect that the installations will spur from July to December 2014. Even if it turns out that the installation is lower than 8GW, Chinese government will continue its promotion and supporting programs instead of abandoning its DG development due to slow progresses.