China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) have officially announced the 13th Five-Year Plan for power development, including carbon emission, power structure adjustment, power system reform, and electric vehicle (EV) implementation. They also announced a new target for solar PV energy.

A PV installation target of “more than” 110GW

Up until late-2015, the total installed capacity of PV solar and wind energy reached 172GW, a significant increase compared to 330MW back in late-2000, according to the 13th Five-Year Plan. In order to respond to global energy saving and carbon emission in changing the overall domestic power systems, a new goal has been set in the 13th Five-Year Plan.

The 13th Five-Year Plan pointed out that the installed PV capacity will be more than 68GW during the 13th Five-Year period. A PV installation goal of more than 110GW is to achieve by 2020, including more than 60GW of distributed generation and 5GW of PV solar. This will boost the proportion of solar energy consumption to 21.2%.

The target for wind power has increased to more than 79GW during the 13th Five-Year period. The cumulative installation will surpass 210GW by 2020, including more than 5GW of off-shore wind power, boosting the proportion of power consumption to 9.9%. Meanwhile, by 2020, the cumulative installed capacity will be 15GW for biomass power, 340GW for hydroelectric power, and 58GW for nuclear power.

EnergyTrend Comment: Should continue to promote grid parity

Regarding the 13th Five-Year Plan, EnergyTrend analysts indicated that although the new solar target of “more than 110GW” is lower than the previously proposed 150GW target, it’s difficult to see whether it will be a good news or not with such vague wording – “more than 110GW.”

EnergyTrend analysts pointed out that the 13th Five-Year Plan includes power reform, such as West-to-East transmission capacity is expected to increase to 270GW, which may mean that this plan includes power grid arrangement and type of power deployment. As a result, the threshold of “110GW” may be connected with the amount of grid-connection and the availability of subsidies.

The Chinese government didn’t announce the 13th Five-Year Plan in order to revise the 150GW target downward. But the new target leaves high flexibility for future market trend. “In this case, China should continue to promote grid parity and go on with the development of distributed generation. Promoting local consumption to get rid of the reliance on subsidies and power grid may be the most reliable choice for manufacturers at the moment,” said EnergyTrend analysts.
(Photo Credit: Joe Hunt via Flickr shared by CC 2.0)

(Reported by Rhea Tsao, translated by Christine Chen)