Photovoltaic industry powering ahead
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E-mail China Daily, August 13, 2012
Promising market
According to an estimate by US-based researcher NPD Solarbuzz, only about 70 percent of China's solar modules production will be exported this year, down from 95 percent in 2010. Exports from Hebei province, one of the major solar manufacturing bases and the home of Yingli, decreased by one-fourth in the first half of the year.
![Workers assemble solar modules at a factory in Nantong, in East China's Jiangsu province. There are more than 2,000 companies in the country's photovoltaic industry. [Photo/China Daily]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20120813/001372acd0b51192a1ee05.jpg "Workers assemble solar modules at a factory in Nantong, in East China's Jiangsu province. There are more than 2,000 companies in the country's photovoltaic industry. [Photo/China Daily]") |
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Workers assemble solar modules at a factory in Nantong, in East China's Jiangsu province. There are more than 2,000 companies in the country's photovoltaic industry. [Photo/China Daily] |
A vast Chinese market is a vital source of demand for the country's makers of renewable-energy equipment.
"China will become the world's largest solar market in the next two to three years," said Wang Yiyu, Yingli's chief strategy officer.
Last year, China overtook Japan as Asia's biggest solar market, and its growth is likely to continue. Some 3,000 megawatts of solar facilities will be installed in China this year, up from about 800 mW in 2010, Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported.
NPD Solarbuzz is even more optimistic, predicting that the country will add about 5,000 mW of solar capacity in 2012. With European governments considering further cuts in subsidies, China might even finish the year as the world's largest solar market, ahead of today's leaders, Germany and Italy.
Industry targets have been laid down and subsidies splashed out.
The growth of the photovoltaic industry in China has been supported by a positive policy environment, which is now acting as a solid foundation for increased adoption of the photovoltaic technology.
Key incentive policies in China include both feed-in-tariff mechanism and government rebate programs.
FIT is a policy mechanism designed to accelerate investment in renewable energy technologies. It achieves this by offering long-term contracts to renewable energy producers, usually based on the cost of generation of each technology.
And the central government is continuing to work on new incentive schemes, such as the Renewable Portfolio Standard Management Measures and the Distributed Generation Management Measures, which could be rolled out during 2012, according to the research note by Ray Lian, senior analyst at Solarbuzz.
Since last year, China has started using FIT to guarantee the prices that utilities must pay solar power producers for their electricity. The program guarantees solar developers a payment of 1 yuan per kilowatt-hour, or 1.15 yuan per kWh in some cases depending on the timing and location of the project.
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