Market research group IHS is sticking with its previous forecast of distributed PV (DPV) power in China this year despite some industry estimates at this years SNEC PV Power Expo in Shanghai of a markedly smaller rollout.
Speaking to pv magazine, Ash Sharma, senior director of Solar Research at IHS Technology, agrees that "there are concerns over China's ability to install distributed PV and so far this year, demand has been weak in China. However we do still expect around 4 GW of distributed PV to be installed this year and total installations to reach approximately 13.5 GW."
A number of industry sources attending the Shanghai confab reckoned with about 6 GWp of ground-mounted PV and just 1 GWp of rooftop solar this year due mainly to the lack of regulations covering government incentives for distributed PV. Some added that they hoped they would be able to build more large-scale plants and push ground-mounted PV capacity up to about 10 MW this year.
Sharma is confident that Chinese policymakers will soon introduce new regulations, however.
"We are predicting that new policy will be unveiled by the government in the coming months to support the development of DPV," he said, adding that government action would provide better policy on financing of such projects.
While stating that IHS stood by its earlier forecast, Sharma said there was "a possibility that some of the DPV quota gets shifted to utility-scale."
"If the roof-top segment remains slow, we expect that policy will be adjusted to allow more large-scale projects."
IHS predicted in March that China would install 4.8 GW of rooftop PV and 8 GW of ground-mounted PV this year for a total of 12.8 GW. China originally stated a DPV goal for the year of 8 GW.
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