China’s solar power industry moves away from rapid capacity expansions, but the country’s solar market is still big. And, the National Energy Administration (NEA), China highlighted that the new solar PV installations in the country had reached 24.3GW in the first half of 2018.
The NEA pointed out that at the end of June 2018, cumulative PV installations had reached 154.51GW. This was inclusive of utility-scale PV power plants (112.6GW) and Distributed Generation (DG) projects (41.9GW). In the context, the first half 2018 installations of utility-scale projects were said to have touched around 12.24GW, which was down 30% from the prior period. DG installations were reported to have been 12.24GW, a 72% increase on a year-on-year basis.
Meanwhile, at the end of May, in a move that was coordinated, The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and the National Energy Administration (NEA) issued the ‘2018 Solar PV Power Generation Notice’ whereby 2018 caps were imposed on China’s utility and DG markets.
Earlier in 2017, the DG projects had accounted for more than 19GW of over 53GW of PV installations. The changes in PV deployment in China were expected to affect total deployments in 2018 and beyond. Meanwhile, the NEA said that the nation’s solar idle rate had fallen 3.2% points to 3.6% in that period. A chamber of commerce stated that China’s solar power industry would increase the supply of highly efficient products.
