Chinese Provinces Acting Fast On Subsidy PV Projects

• Provinces in China are submitting the list of PV projects selected under state bidding to the federal administration for subsidies
• The list comprises both ground mounted and distributed energy projects as well
• Winners at the national level will be able to get state subsidy out of RMB 1.5 billion allocated for this year and accommodated as per grid availability

Even beyond the hubbub about the COVID-19 pandemic creating demand and supply problems in China, a lot has been happening recently in the world's largest solar market as the administration is pushing the transition from former generous and uncapped feed-in tariffs to a framework based on auctions and subsidy-free systems. One of the measures is to have provincial administrations provide a list of PV projects that can be considered for this year's subsidy budget of RMB 1.5 billion.

The National Energy Administration (NEA) recently asked its grid companies to estimate the amount of wind and solar power that can be connected to the grid in 2020. For solar, it turned out to be over 47 GW, as per local media reports. Somewhere closer to this is the China Photovoltaic Industry Association's (CPIA) forecast for the country to add between 32 GW to 45 GW of new PV capacity in 2020.

Recently, Chinese media reported that a total of 33.59 GW cumulative PV capacity in the form of 4,168 projects were seeking state subsidies in 22 provinces which the central government is reviewing. Over the past few weeks, various local PV media portals have been reporting about provincial governments forwarding lists with selected ground mounted and distributed PV projects to the federal government for approval. Some of these are collated as follows:

Anhui province: Out of 2 GW worth of projects that participated in the open competitive auction for grid capacity in 2020, Anhui Province allocated a total of 653 MW comprising 13 centralized projects with a combined capacity of 473 MW. Winner of the largest capacity was Sungrow with 150 MW, followed by China Guangdong Nuclear Power with 89 MW, China Power Construction with 77 MW and Linyang Energy with 49 MW, among others.

Hebei Province: On June 15, 2020 it was reported that the Hebei Province announced a list of 58 projects for PV power generation in 2020 with a combined capacity of 3.74 GW. These projects had cleared the state round and moved on to the national bidding round. The largest project in the list is from Hebei Guoshun New Energy with 1.38 GW, followed by Guodian Investment with 417.6 MW. Other contenders in the list include Three Gorges, China Guangdong Nuclear Power, Datang, and China Power Construction.

Shaanxi Province: On June 9, 2020, Shaanxi Province released a list of 78 projects with a total capacity of 1.71 GW under the PV state subsidy bidding information project. This list comprises 30 ground mounted projects adding up to 1.63 GW along with 29 distributed energy projects for self-consumption selling excess electricity to the grid and 19 distributed projects.

Xinjiang Province: On June 8, 2020, Xinjiang province's Development and Reform Commission selected a total of 392 MW capacity for 2020 that came from TBEA (252 MW), Three Gorges (100 MW), and Datang (40 MW).

Guangdong Province: The Provincial Energy Bureau of Guangdong reported selecting 260 PV projects for state-subsidized bidding power generation projects with a total capacity of 1.58 GW. The list includes 15 ground mounted power projects of 1.135 GW. The list included 245 distributed projects with 447 MW combined capacity.

Shandong Province: A total of 976 MW of PV capacity was received in the form of 19 projects with Dongying Caijin Clean Energy selected for 3 projects of 129 MW capacity in aggregate, followed by State Power Investment Corporation, Datang and Weifang Jineng all for 100 MW each, among others.