Official data released by NEA states that 24.4 GW of new PV capacity was installed in China during the first half of 2017. On top of this, AECEA estimates that another 10.5 GW was added in July, bringing the total from Jan-July to 34.92 GW, around 380 MW ahead of 2016’s figure of 34.54 GW.
China’s cumulative capacity now stands at 112.34 GW, already around 7 GW ahead of the 2020 target of 105 GW outlined in the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020), and current estimates predict that by 2020 China's PV capacity could reach as much as 230 GW.
After another installation rush in the first half of the year, AECEA now expects demand to slow down until at least the end of Q3. The fourth quarter of 2017 is harder to predict at this stage, says AECEA, due to the launch of the electricity certificate trading scheme scheduled for November. Pilot programmes for this scheme including more than 2,000 companies have been in place since 2013, and the nationwide launch is designed to quadruple its scope, making it the largest CO2 certificate trading scheme in the world.
Based on the continued strong demand in July, after the latest round of FIT cuts took hold, AECEA has upped its forecast for PV installations in China to 40-45 GW, an increase of at least 16% on 2016. The company has nicknamed Chinese PV ‘the bull’, thanks to its performance in comparison to other generation sources.
In the period Jan-July 2017, China added 1.09 GW of new nuclear capacity, 6.69 GW of hydro, 7.3 GW of wind and 18.84 GW of thermal power. The size of new solar installations for this period, 34.92 GW, outlines the increasingly important role played by the technology in China’s energy mix.
Since 2010, according to AECEA, the overall share of renewables in China’s energy mix has increased by 8%. In 2016, the country generated 65% of its energy from coal, and the country has an additional 200 GW pipeline of new coal power plants set to come online by 2020.
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China is not only dominating the PV Production- with it`s outstanding Home Market the learning rate of chinese companies downstream is e.g. compared to Germany appr. 20times higher. And 5 times higher then Japan. System solutions therefore will come from China in very short time to come.
Same to happen with Batteries and Electric Cars- a gigantic will for sucess in production and a huge domestiv market are the drivers again.
So- the West is at the edge: You may decide for protection with duties which totally failed as we have seen. Or you may decide to set political goals and encourage people and companies to compete for the best solutions.
Nobody should forget that the chinese population means that you can reach 4x more poeple then in the US- using the same language. The longterm huge advantage for US- Companies in the world market is therefore gone.
And the EU ist still talking about 8 Mio. People problems in greece- not about how and with which measure to create future tech. Sad to say that, but impressed by the chinese will to create.
The reported 200 GW of coal plants still under construction gives an annual rate of up to 66 GW over three years, depending on what “by 2020” means. The H1 2017 figure of 18.9 GW is slightly over half that rate. You have to wonder whether more coal building sites and projects are simply being abandoned than Beijing claims it has stopped.
The National Energy Administration of China also just launched a PV market monitor, demanding mostly that consumption is guaranteed and that feed-in tariffs are kept low. Four provinces in the North-West are to halt PV development, and most of the rest of the country is asked to improve its market environment, mostly addressing curtailment, or reduce the scale of PV development. Similar mechanism already exists for wind power. More on: https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/establishment-monitoring-evaluation-system-market-environment-pv-plant-development-trial/