Up To 90 GW New Solar In China In 2022

• CPIA expects China's annual solar capacity addition in 2022 will add up to between 75 GW to 90 GW
• Annual deployments between 2022 and 2025 for China are likely to fall within the range of 83 GW and 99 GW
• Large scale solar and distributed PV segments are likely to grow at the same scale, according to Bohua
• Polysilicon output from China in 2022 expected to exceed 700,000 tons, up from 505,000 tons in 2021, while output from wafers, cells, modules strongly increases as well

The China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) has forecast the largest solar market of the world to report annual solar PV capacity additions of 75 GW to 90 GW in 2022, accounting for 195 GW to 240 GW of global deployments this year.

CPIA Honorary Chairman Wang Bohua counts the annual solar capacity additions of China from 2022 to 2025 to grow to between 83 GW to 99 GW, which will be contributing to global deployments of 232 GW to 286 GW per year during the same period. To support his analysis, Bohua referred to phase I of a 100 GW wind and solar project China is building that's currently underway in the country.

In comparison, China installed a record of 54.88 GW new solar capacity in 2021 according to the National Energy Administration (NEA) comprising 25.6 GW of large scale and 29.28 GW of distributed PV, which is an improvement over its previous calculation of 53 GW (see China Added 53 GW Record Solar Volume In 2021).

Speaking at the Fourth Comprehensive Energy Service Industry Innovation and Development Conference, Bohua shared a presentation on Photovoltaic Industry Development Review in 2021 and Outlook for 2022. He sees distributed PV growing at the same pace as large scale solar capacity this year.

Bohua also admitted to increasing competition to the globally dominating Chinese solar manufacturing industry from the European Union (EU), the US and India encouraging and incentivizing domestic manufacturing build up. It would need the industry to innovate to be able to maintain its stronghold.

CPIA's forecast brings a broad consensus to the Chinese solar installation estimates for 2022. Another local industry association, China Electricity Council has guided for over 90 GW new capacity, followed by BloombergNEF anticipating new additions of between 81 GW to 92 GW in the country (see BloombergNEF: 228 GW DC New Solar In 2022).

In terms of polysilicon, China produced 505,000 tons in 2021, which in 2022 CPIA expects to grow to exceed 700,000 tons. Similarly, in 2022, the Chinese silicon wafer production capacity is likely to exceed 293 GW, up from 227 GW in 2021. Crystalline solar cell output of China last year was 198 GW that's likely to grow to over 261 GW in 2022.

For modules, CPIA expects the annual production capacity to exceed 233 GW in 2022, up from 182 GW in 2021. Earlier, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) counted Chinese export figures for solar PV products to have amounted to $28.4 billion in 2021 (see China Produced 27.5% More Polysilicon In 2021).

CPIA expects the market share of large size wafers, namely 182mm and 210mm, to grow to 75%, up from 45% in 2021 which was a paltry 4.5% in 2020. The proportion of N-type cells comprising heterojunction and TOPCon, will increase from 3% in 2021 to 13.4% in 2022.