Policy-driven Chinese PV market

2013, simultaneous expansion of manufacturing and applications

The reorganization of Suntech's bankruptcy became one of the highest ratings in the photovoltaic industry in 2013, but the evolution of Suntech's plot did not have much impact on its peers' mentality. Even if they did not win in Suntech's bankruptcy and reorganization, Yingli did not change its established development strategy. Milian Liansheng, Chairman of Yingli Group, expressed his intention to “acquire some companies and have already inspected the two or thirties” when they explicitly withdrew from the acquisition of Wuxi Suntech. SMEs with a capacity of 400-500 MW will eventually select 2-3 companies.” Yingli is not afraid of expansion, they are the world's largest PV companies with 3.2 GW of shipments, and plans for a larger downstream power plant in 2014. .

More than Yingli, China's first-line photovoltaic manufacturers, such as Trina Solar, Artes, Jinao, Jinke, Yanhui, Hairun, Daquan, etc. are moving toward the road of expansion. The power of manufacturers to expand production comes from the growth of the global market. Judging from the global installed capacity of 37 GW, the Asia-Pacific market and the North American market have the highest growth rates.

The subsidy for distributed generation of 0.42 yuan/kWh as stipulated in the Notice on Exploiting Price Leverage to Promote the Healthy Development of the Photovoltaic Industry issued in late August 2013, and the three types of substations for ground power stations from 0.9 to 1 yuan/kWh Electricity prices set the tone for China's PV development in the next two years or so. The introduction of the electricity price policy directly affected the installation of photovoltaic power plants in the second half of the year. The person in charge of the photovoltaic park in a city in Gansu Province directly felt the impact of the introduction of the electricity price policy. “On March 15, 2013, the government department called the project owners to meet to promote the construction of the photovoltaic project. The leadership said that the electricity price is about to be adjusted and it is hoped that the project will be started ahead of schedule. People started work until a large number of work started in October.” Eventually, one company failed to complete the project and missed the one-dollar price.

Ground power station competition

Affected by the adjustment of electricity price, the final amount of grid-connected electricity of China Electricity Council in 2013 was 11.3 GW, which exceeded the 10 GW installed capacity estimated by the National Energy Administration. The increase in new installed capacity comes directly from the western region. In these regions, the price of electricity will be lowered in 2014, and project revenue will also be directly affected. According to Solarbuzz statistics, in 2013, Gansu's net volume was 2.34 GW, Xinjiang was 1.72 GW, and Qinghai was 1.67 GW. "PV-Tech PRO" reporter recently learned from an interview in Gansu that the Gansu Power Grid Company was "very tolerant" of access to the grid connection project at the end of 3013. “Some power stations have only been built partly, and they have also passed the acceptance check of Gansu Power Grid.” According to related sources, “In Gansu, there is an existing situation of power curtailment, and it is difficult for new access projects to reach full capacity, and even some projects have 90% of power. All of them must be limited, and if they are not built, they will not be able to reach the end of the year and it will be built some later.” The insider also said, “A more important factor is that Gansu has approved too many roads in the past, and in 2014, Gansu The quota of only 500MW is not enough at all. To reduce the level of competition in 2014, more projects will be accessed in 2013 if possible."

In November 2013, the National Energy Administration solicited opinions on the installed capacity of photovoltaic power generation in 2014 and solicited opinions for the quotas issued by the 8GW distributed project and the 4GW ground power station project to provinces. After three months, the National Energy Administration raised the total planned for 2014 to 14.05 GW, of which distributed 8 GW and ground power station 6.05 GW, and the scale of the latter was raised. This stems from the provincial demand for terrestrial power plant quotas. According to relevant personnel from a provincial development and reform commission in the eastern province, “we don’t know how much a distributed project can accomplish, but at least the ground power station can guarantee it.” After the first consultation, the relevant leaders of the provincial development and reform commissions frequently traveled to Beijing to fight for more ground project quotas. Therefore, in February 2014, the National Energy Administration raised the quota of ground power stations in more than 10 provinces by about 10MW.

When the quotas are issued to provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, the operation of each region is also different. For example, in Zhejiang, both the distributed and the ground are decomposed into more detailed indicators for the following municipalities; Shandong decomposes the distributed indicators and the Provincial Development and Reform Commission still exercises unified control over the ground projects. In Gansu, Xinjiang, Qinghai and other large installed provinces, the only indicators are closely watched by the project owners. Before this article was drafted, the details of how the quotas of these provinces were broken down were not yet available. While some cities and project owners are focusing their efforts on obtaining quotas, they are also looking for new ways. The Xinjiang Hami District Development and Reform Commission began calling on local owners to start construction of new projects as soon as possible after the Spring Festival in 2014. The 1.25 GW photovoltaic project in Hami, Xinjiang is approved by the National Energy Administration. It does not occupy Xinjiang quotas, of which 950 MW is attributed to the Hami District Development and Reform Commission and 300 MW to the Construction Corps Development and Reform Commission. This is approved in the name of scenery complement. At present, the 1.25 GW road has been configured. In Qinghai, the hydropower station in the upper reaches of the Yellow River has built 320 MW of photovoltaic power stations in the Republic. This year, hundreds of megawatts of power stations will still be built. According to the plan, the total installed capacity of this project will reach 1 GW, while Qinghai's quota this year is only 500 MW. However, there is no need to worry that hydropower projects in the upper reaches of the Yellow River are complementary to the Republican project and do not occupy Qinghai quotas.

According to relevant sources, the quotas set by the National Energy Administration for the provinces are formulated in accordance with local grid access conditions and other relevant factors. This kind of non-quota complementary project with water and light can better solve the problem of accommodation. In Gansu, companies have tried to find new ways to avoid quota restrictions. A company has declared more than a hundred megawatts of agricultural photovoltaic projects, and another company has tried to combine special policies with the National Energy Administration by combining desertification with desertification.

The National Energy Administration also pointed out in its comments on the scale of construction in 2014 that if the situation of power curtailment in the Northwest China will be reduced, the scale of construction in the same year will be reduced, and the approval of new filings in the next year will be stopped. "PV-Tech PRO" reporter recently discovered in the Northwest Investigation that the situation of power curtailment has already existed and it is difficult to effectively solve it in 2014. The power delivery in some regions will also be more severe.

Distributed confusion

Behind the fierce competition for ground power stations is the 8 GW of distributed projects and the uncertainty of their projects. The National Energy Administration has adopted a series of measures in order to achieve its goals. It first issued the Interim Measures for the Management of Distributed Photovoltaic Power Generation Projects to provide more specific regulations for distributed projects; on the other hand, the United Nations Development Bank gave The "Opinions on Supporting Distributed Photovoltaic Power Generation Financial Services" includes financial innovations, the establishment of local investment and financing institutions, and the repatriation of funds. In order to open up a breakthrough in the development of distributed projects, the National Energy Administration has even set up 18 distributed photovoltaic demonstration areas to find problems, bottlenecks, and solutions for distributed projects through centralized resource allocation.

As for the recent distributed scale in 2014, there were once unsubstantiated rumors that the National Energy Administration had secured 4GW at the bottom and was confident that it would achieve 6GW. In fact, it is already evident that the industry lacks confidence in distributed projects. According to the analysis of Wang Sicheng, vice chairman of the China Renewable Energy Professional Committee, in the distributed projects that are mainly self-employed, the benefits of residential electricity prices and large industrial electricity user projects are obviously lower than those of industrial and commercial electricity price users. The former is profitable. Look no more attractive. This is also the project of the 18 demonstration areas. The majority of projects are based on industrial and commercial electricity price users. The few projects that have been started are often implemented by enterprises on their own roofs.

In November 2013, the APEC Low-Carbon Cities Alliance conducted research by the United Nations Development Bank in Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces. In response to the outstanding problems of distributed projects, two major solutions were proposed: It adopts the unified financing platform for unified loans, as well as the tariff collection and payment platform for collection and payment. Although the National Energy Administration agreed with the National Development Bank to provide financial support for distributed demonstration areas, the China Development Bank's head office also gave top-level opinions and guidelines, but encountered various obstacles when implementing the branches. In addition, when requesting the declaration of a distributed demonstration area, the National Energy Administration clearly pointed out that each demonstration area supports in principle a single owner's unified investment and construction, and in fact, some demonstration areas have been split into multiple projects of multiple companies, and Shandong The owner of an approved demonstration zone is planning to transfer the project rights to another company that holds a large number of photovoltaic power plants. Financing difficulties, finding a suitable roof, risk control, etc. are all core issues that distributed developers need to solve.