China Installs Close To 60 GW Of New Solar In Q1 2025

Ahead of China’s market-oriented pricing reforms coming into force in June 2025, the Chinese market is likely seeing a rush of solar PV installations. During Q1 2025, the country grew its deployments by 59.71 GW, a more than 30% year-on-year (YoY) increase.  

During January and February this year, the country had installed 39.47 GW, which means monthly installations totaled 20.24 GW in March or 20 GW/month (see China Starts 2025 With Almost 40 GW New PV Installations).  

According to the country’s National Energy Administration (NEA), Q1 installations improved by 13.97 GW from 45.74 GW the country installed in the previous year. However, the increase is still slower compared to an almost 36% YoY jump in Q1 2024 from 33.66 GW in Q1 2023 (see China Installed 45.7 GW New Solar PV Capacity In Q1 2024).  

Starting June 1, 2025, China is set to bring in a contracts for difference (CfD)-based pricing mechanism for wind and solar power plants commissioned after this date. This will be a big move for the world’s largest market that owes a lot of its success to the feed-in-tariff (FIT) mechanism (see World’s Biggest Solar Market Moving Towards CfD Mechanism). 

The new installations in Q1 2025 may be a response to this upcoming change as developers push forward with their solar energy deployments.  

This expands the country’s cumulative installed solar PV capacity to 950 GW, representing a YoY increase of 43.4%. Another 50 GW, which isn’t too far, and the country will be the 1st in the world to individually achieve 1 TW of solar PV capacity. 

China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) forecasts the country’s solar installations this year to drop on a YoY basis to between 215 GW and 255 GW, after registering growth for 6 consecutive years. It attributes these projections to insufficient grid capacity (see China’s Solar PV Market To Slow Down To Around 255 GW In 2025).