China’s 3 GW Target Of High-Efficiency PV installations Will Attack Pollution

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China has launched an aggressive 3 GW target to expand the country’s high-efficiency rooftop solar installations. Such a renewable energy footprint will hopefully help reduce the widespread impacts of China’s too-visible air pollution.

The China announcement mandates an increase in model PV installations using modules with high-energy conversion solar cells.

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has set the target installation capacity of 3 GW for model PV plants to be installed in 2016, Taiwanese newspaper DigiTimes has reported. The NEA requires that model power plants use PV modules made of solar cells with higher energy conversion rates.

According to pv-magazine, the new NEA guidelines for 2016 call for modules used in common PV installations to be made of mono-Si solar cells with a minimum energy conversion rate of 16% or poly silicon cells of at least 15.5%.

“Model PV installations will use modules equipped with higher efficiency cells, with energy conversion rates of 17% for mono-Si cells (allowing minimum power generation of 275 W and 300 W for modules with 60 and 72 mono-Si cells, respectively) and 16.5% for poly-Si cells (allowing minimum power generation of 270 W and 325 W for modules with 60 and 72 poly-Si cells, respectively).”

In 2015 China installed 16.5 GW of PV capacity, resulting in a cumulative capacity of 43 GW. Of that, however, the country installed only 1 GW of capacity from model PV systems. Now the call is for triple that amount in one year.

Related to this goal, Yingli announced this month it has decided to set up a 40:60 joint venture to make multi-crystalline photovoltaic panels in Thailand, by partnering with a local company, Demeter Corp. Operations will start in the second half of this year. The panels will be sold under the Yingli Solar brand name.

Yingli told China Daily the joint venture will also set up a $19-million, 300-mW solar power plant in Rayong, about 140 kilometers southeast of Bangkok.

It has also partnered with Chinese telecommunications and electronics giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, which is also influential in the photovoltaic inverter market, to provide a series of solar power solutions to the Thai market.

Image of China via Shutterstock, Yingli solar plant via China Daily