China tops 50.3 GW of installed PV with over 7 GW of Q1 additions

Apr 25, 2016 11:08 CEST by Militsa Mancheva

April 25 – China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) said Friday that the county’s installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity has reached 50.31 GW at the end of March 2016, after it switched on some 7.14 GW in the first quarter of the year.

The country now operates about 52% more solar parks and PV arrays than it did in the corresponding period of 2015, according to the official statement.

In terms of large solar power plants, China has plugged in a total of 6.17 GW in January-March. This brought the nominal capacity of such facilities across the country to 43.29 GW, NEA calculates.

In the meantime, the combined capacity of distributed generation (DG) solar arrays in the Asian country grew by 970 MW to 7.03 GW.

China’s solar power production increased by 48% year-on-year to 11.8 TWh in the first three months of 2016, of which roughly 1.9 TWh was not transmitted by the grid. Solar curtailment rates were highest in Xinjiang, Gansu and Ningxia, where they stood at 52%, 39% and 20%, accordingly.

Since the start of 2016, PV deployment has been most active in the northern, eastern, middle and southern parts of China — the combined PV capacity in these areas reached 25.6 GW. This means that they managed to surpass the northwest’s 23.64 GW for the first time.

As of end-2015, China is the country with the largest cumulative solar power generation capacity worldwide. The country aims to hit 150 GW by the end of this decade.

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