The China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) has reduced its annual guidance for new solar PV capacity addition in China in 2020 to between 32 GW and 45 GW due to the sector feeling the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. However, there isn't much difference compared to its previous guidance of 35 GW to 45 GW.
Recently, GlobalData had decreased its forecast to 40 GW to about 33.4 GW this year, unlike IHS Markit, which upped its China forecast to 45 GW.
That means China's contribution would increase to global PV additions in 2020, which as per the CPIA's annual report will be around 110 GW to 135 GW. These are lowered expectations from 130 GW to 140 GW it forecast previously. CPIA believes the pandemic is bound to slowdown global PV installations throughout the year.
It sees further technological progress for the solar PV industry in China as major manufacturers steam ahead with their manufacturing expansion plans. Up ahead are interesting times for solar PV technology's application as other industries explore ways to incorporate it in various fields, as per the CPIA reported local media platform Solarbe.com.
CPIA says at the end of 2019, the global production capacity of polysilicon was 675,000 tons, for silicon wafers it was 185.3 GW, for cells 210.9 GW and modules it was 218.7 GW.
As per the National Energy Administration of China, the country exited 2019 having installed 30.11 GW of new PV capacity registering a drop of 32% YoY taking aggregate capacity to 204.3 GW which was an annual increase of 17.1%.