Chinese National Energy Administration (NEA) has come out with latest official statistics of the country's installed power generation capacity. It says in the year 2019, China added 30.11 GW of new solar PV capacity divided as 17.91 GW of large scale solar power plants and 12.2 GW of distributed generation.
This is definitely and expectedly much less than the 44.4 GW China installed in 2018 (see China Installed 44 GW Solar PV In 2018: NEA).
At the end of 2019, aggregate installed solar power capacity of China went up to 204 GW resulting in annual power generation of 224.3 billion kWh. Solar power generation capacity also witnessed curtailment of 4.6 billion kWh last year which was 1% less than the previous year.
China's total installed renewable energy capacity at the end of 2019 was 794 GW to which solar PV contributes 204 GW while wind power adds 210 GW. NEA said it was the first year when wind and solar PV generation exceeded 200 GW each for the first time. Renewables accounted for 39.5% of China's total installed power capacity.
The year 2019 was when China made concrete moves towards cutting down subsidies for large scale solar power development and offering auctions as a mechanism for interested projects to secure state subsidy. PV InfoLink had expected 33.6 GW of new solar for China in 2019 but pegged 2020 installations to reach up to 50 GW expecting a boom between Q4/2019 and Q2/2020 (see China To Install 33.6 GW Solar In 2019). However, the unexpected occurrence and flare up of deadly coronavirus or Covid-19, originating from China, is most likely to have stalled this expected pace.
For the year 2020, PV InfoLink recently forecasted that despite any coronavirus related slowdown, global solar module demand should reach 134.3 GW with China absorbing 42.5 GW of modules (see PV InfoLink Sees PV Market Growth Despite Coronavirus).