By the end of July, the new PV installation in China was 3.3GW, still 10.7GW to go in the rest five months to complete this year’s 14GW target. The 8GW distributed PV Generation (DG) target seems even difficult to achieve as the installation was only 1GW. Nevertheless, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has officially announced to revise the DG installation target down to 5GW and will try to install a total of 13GW of solar power this year.
Recently, NEA revealed the 3.3GW of new installation from January to July. Although the amount represented a 100% increase comparing to the first six month of 2013, it shared only about a quarter of the yearly target. Wu Xing-xiong (吳新雄), head of NEA, officially announced a new target in August, revising the DG installation target from 8GW down to 5GW as well as aiming the yearly installation at 13GW. In addition, PV installation projects which had applied for Golden Sun Program, a subsidy scheme suspended since 2014, could continue to complete installation and then receive subsidies, and the expected 2.5GW of installation will also be counted as a part of the 13GW target.
According to the revision, the new installation diagram is:
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Delay and Promotion
Both DG and ground-mounted PV systems’ installation schedules have delayed. Slow progress of environmental impact assessment was the main problem for ground-mounted PV systems. On the other hand, the main problem of DG systems was that there wasn’t any reliable business model for convincible promotion.
Given the delays, NEA ultimately decided to revise the target and introduced necessary adjustments such as further supportive policies. For DG systems, the government additionally gives broader definition: PV systems under 20MW and are installed in idle lands, farms, even ponds could all be regarded as DG systems.
However, typical installations are not crucial.
“It is highly possible for China to achieve its new 13GW target,” said an analyst at EnergyTrend. “The main problem for the Chinese government to conquer is always how to increase the rate of grid-connected systems.”
Plans in the Future
To balance power supply and consumption between western and eastern China, the Chinese government plans to reach 27GW of DG system installation by 2020, when the accumulative PV installation would reach 50GW nationwide.