It’s no secret — China is installing solar power faster than you can say “Bob’s your uncle.” The recently announced goal of one large Chinese solar developer is just another indication of that, but it’s certainly a big one. Shunfeng Photovoltaic says that it is now aiming to install 20,000 megawatts (MW) of solar power capacity by 2016. To put that into perspective, the largest solar PV power plant in the world is 600 MW in size, and the next behind it is currently about half that size. All but a dozen or so solar PV power plants are less than 100 MW in size. So… 10,000 MW by 2016 is huge.
Shunfeng is apparently already to 890 MW. So, just another 9,110 MW in ~3 years. “We aim to add 3GW in each of this year, next year and 2016, so that by the end of 2016 we will have 10 GW,” Shunfeng chairman Zhang Yi recently told the South China Morning Post. Good luck to the company!
If you follow the solar module industry closely, Shunfeng may ring a bell. The company is in the process of purchasing Suntech’s manufacturing arm. Wuxi Suntech was formerly the largest solar module company in the world — until it ran into a number of controversies and ended up bankrupt. Its solar production capacity totals ~2,500 MW.
An integrated solar company of that size could certainly take advantage of China’s strong solar power growth targets. We’ll see if it succeeds and hits its 10,000 MW target.
According to Yi, Shufeng is able to achieve returns as high as 15% on its solar power projects.
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