Solar PV of China accounted for about one third (174GW) of the global total installed capacity in 2018 and contributed to 3.5% of national total power generation in 2020 .
According to the administration, rural areas in China that have the potential to install PV panels on roofs cover approximately 27.3 billion square meters, and there's huge potential for further development. Although distributed PV slightly surpassed centralized large-area PV in capacity, the latter's growth was faster, the CPIA said.
State Grid Corp of China, the largest power provider in the country, released a measure on power spot trading across provinces on Wednesday, a milestone in the country's spot power market construction.
Currently, over half of the nation's new installations of power generators are photovoltaic facilities. The surge prompted the CPIA to revise its projections for China's new PV installations this year, raising the forecast from an initial range of 120-140 GW to 160-180 GW. "China's solar power global market share has exceeded 80 percent.
Benefiting from a complete life-cycle supply chain and rapid advancements in PV power generation technology, China has emerged as a leader, achieving significant cost reductions and shaping the landscape of solar energy on a global scale," said Jiang Yali, a solar sector analyst at BloombergNEF.
In the first seven-months of 2021, China installed 7.66 GW of residential solar, with close to 1.8 GW installed in July alone. The market is taking advantage of the relatively generous and fixed budget of CNY 0.5 billion ($77.5 million) and a subsidy of CNY 0.03/kWh.