China Adds Record 24.4 Gigawatts Of New Solar In First Half Of 2017
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China installed a record 24.4 gigawatts worth of new solar capacity across the first half of 2017, according to new figures from the country’s solar PV association, a new year-on-year record of 9% up on 2016’s own record installation numbers.
The China PV Industry Association (CPIA) has released its latest figures for the country’s solar installations, and it is big news and good news for the solar industry. Chinese policy has been pushing solar development, and it looks like the industry has kept pace with political desires, installing a record 24.4 gigawatts (GW) worth of new solar over the first half of this year, thanks to as much as 16 or 17 GW worth of solar installed in the second quarter — not bad considering the 7.21 GW installed in the first quarter. This pushes the country’s installed solar capacity up to 101.82 GW — made up of 84.39 GW of utility-scale PV and 14.73 GW of distributed PV.
Distributed solar accounted for a third of the first half of the year’s new installations, or around 7 GW, according to Xing Yiteng, deputy section chief in the new energy division at the National Energy Administration, who spoke at a news conference on Wednesday in Beijing.
At this rate, if things continue the way they have been going over the first half of the year, and policy continues to drive the installation of renewable energy located central to where it is needed, solar may well again beat the massive 34 GW installed in 2016 — a figure which was up 126% on 2015’s solar installations, and well up on analyst predictions.
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