China to see lower growth in solar farm capacity this year

The mainland is expected to see the installation of 10GW of solar farm capacity this year, well short of last year's 13GW, according to a researcher at the top energy policymaker.

The shortfall was due to financing and low return problems experienced by Beijing's "distributed projects" plan to relieve power transmission bottlenecks in the sparsely populated but solar resource-rich northern regions, said Wang Sicheng at the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission.

The 10GW forecast is well short of the 14GW target set by the National Energy Administration (NEA) early this year but matches the revised target of 10GW announced in June.

Then in August NEA head Wu Xinxiong gave a new target of 13GW, which industry executives said reflected his confidence that support policies subsequently launched in September would boost installation.

Wang's latest projection showed that challenges facing the industry remain despite the September policies designed to address problem areas.

In the first nine months of the year, total solar installations reached 3.79GW in capacity, comprising 1.34GW of distributed projects and 2.45GW of large-scale ground-mounted projects. Only 0.34GW of distributed projects and 0.15GW of ground-mounted ones were added in the third quarter.