China's NEA announce solar energy target of 110 GW by 2020
It has been has announced China's National Energy Administration (NEA) to have set a solar energy target of 110 GW by 2020 110 GW represent a 20 percent reduction to the previously communicated target of 150 GW. Accordingly, the 110 GW is split into 60 GW (distributed generation) and the remaining 50 GW shall be made up by 45 GW ground-mounted utility-scale systems + 5 GW of CSP. Pls note: 45 GW utility is not explicitly mentioned in the official communication. All these individual targets are challenging in itself, i.e. 60 GW of distributed generation, given that today approx. 15 GW are installed, 45 GW of ground-mounted utility-scale system have already been installed, and 5 GW of CSP, because CSP is still in a relatively early stage of development. (FYI: The wind target was as well reduced from 250 GW to 210 GW).
Given that by the end of 2015 the total installed capacity amounted to 43 GW and in Q1-Q3/2016 an additional 27 GW were installed and in the best case in Q4/2016 another 5-8 GW could be possibly installed, i.e. by the end of 2016 China could be home to approx. 75-78 GW which translates into an average installation volume of below 9 GW/ a through 2020. If the recently semi-officially communicated reduction of FIT possibly effective by Jan 1, 2017 will become reality and will most likely will trigger a surge of installations through Sept 2017, in order to benefit from the rather generous 2016 FIT, the one might wonder how much could be left for the remaining 3 years of the 13th FYP period.
AECEA considers this 110 GW target as a "minimum" target, i.e. there is room for more. Past experience showed, e.g. the 12th Five-Year-Plan (2011-2015) target of 35 GW was exceeded by a good 20 percent leading to 43 GW of installed capacity. As well, the official wording today suggests that the 110 GW will be exceeded. The question might be to which extent. Attached is chart depicting two possible deployment scenario and accordingly AECEA estimates that between 135 to 147 GW could be installed by 2020.
