China is expected to see robust growth in the development of distributed solar photovoltaic systems mounted to industrial and commercial buildings, industry insiders said.
While the high price of electricity for businesses provides an economic driver for the potential boom, the increasingly high demand for green power from enterprises, especially listed ones, will also add impetus, they said.
The development of distributed solar PV in China has gained momentum in recent years.
In 2022, the nationwide increase in solar PV power generation capacity stood at roughly 87.4 gigawatts, 51.1 GW of which was contributed by distributed facilities — those installed close to the place where the electricity will be used. That marked the second straight year that the proportion of distributed solar PV reached more than half of the newly added capacity.
It was a trend that continued in the first three quarters of last year, with the National Energy Administration saying that 67.1 GW of new distributed solar PV capacity was connected to the grid from January to September, representing almost 52.1 percent of newly added solar PV capacity.
Often installed on a building''s rooftop or facade, distributed solar PV electricity systems avoid the high distribution losses that occur in traditional centralized power generation and transmission.
Qian Jing, vice-president of Jinko Solar, a major Chinese PV player, said she believes distributed solar PV will play an increasingly bigger role in promoting the growth of solar PV capacity, with a bigger contribution coming from industrial and commercial solar PV.
The development of centralized ground-mounted solar PV stations is restricted by the availability of land, she said, as well as the grid''s inability to absorb large amounts of intermittent solar power.
She said tapping industrial and commercial distributed solar PV has great potential in China because of the country''s special national conditions.
Most urban residents in China, who are major electricity consumers, live in apartment buildings, Qian said. As urbanization continues, the number of residents in rural parts of China has declined substantially, and many of those left in rural areas are elderly people with low electricity demand.
Qian said distributed solar PV systems offer a viable solution for enterprises to address their high electricity costs and demand for green power.
The prices businesses pay for electricity are much higher than those paid by households, she said, and many companies are subject to power rationing during summer, the peak season for electricity consumption.
Installing solar panels is a good way for businesses to solve these problems, Qian said, especially because summer is the best season for solar PV power generation.
She said listed companies in many countries, including China, are required to disclose details of their carbon emissions, which will potentially increase such companies'' demand for green electricity.
One option is to have their own solar power generation systems, she said, while another is moving factories to western parts of the country where green electricity is more readily available and accessible.
Wang Weiquan, deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, also said industrial and commercial distributed solar PV will play an increasingly dominant role in solar PV power development in China.
He said highly developed regions in eastern China that are still heavily dependent on fossil fuel cannot solely rely on importing green electricity from western parts of the country as they work toward carbon neutrality.
They also need to produce green electricity to meet part of their power demand, Wang said.
"It''s almost impossible for these regions to develop many large-scale ground-mounted solar PV stations, as they have limited land but dense populations," he said, adding that tapping the potential of rooftops was an inevitable choice.
Compared with rural houses, industrial and commercial complexes have much bigger and stronger rooftops, making solar PV installation safer and more efficient, he said.
Xi Jinping, the president of China, has elucidated the overarching objective for tackling climate change, that is, China will adopt more powerful policies and measures to achieve carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 (Sun 2020). In making plans to reduce CO2 emissions, governments of different nations have primarily put stress on the power sector, among which the renewable energy power has developed very quickly. As a renewable energy, solar power is exhaustible. In terms of environmental protection and energy conservation, solar power technology has inherent advantages (Wang et al. 2016).
Promoting the development of CSP will increase the proportion of renewable energy that connects to the grid and will improve the national contribution to CO2 emission reduction which aids to speed up the process of carbon peak by 2030 and helps to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. CSP plays a positive role in strengthening the domestic determination of low-carbon transformation and global climate governance. But at the same time, CSP also faces huge challenges, mainly due to the high cost compared with other renewable energy such as solar photovoltaic. Therefore, attention should be paid to CSP research and development.
The contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) it comprehensively sorted out the existing CSP projects and the development policies of CSP industry. (2) This paper uses LCOE model to analyze and compare different technology types of PT, ST, secondary reflection ST, and LFR from economic perspective. (3) The policy implications are put forward from preferential loans, tax incentives, and R&D fund support to promote the rapid development of the CSP industry.
The remainder of the paper will be organized as follows. The "Current status of CSP in China" section presents the cumulative installed capacity, operating projects and projects under construction, technological innovation, and policy review. The "Methodology" section discusses the LCOE model and related variables and factors. The project characteristics are presented in the "Parameterization and assumptions" section. The "Results" section shows the calculation of LCOE of different CSP projects. In the "Policy implications" section, preferential loans policies, tax incentives, and R&D fund support are discussed. The "Conclusion" section summarizes the main points of this paper.
As one of the important renewable energy, solar energy has taken up significant position in the global energy system in recent years. CSP has entered the practical stage in some developed countries, China''s research on CSP started late, and the level of commercialization is still low. However, some key technologies have been mastered. Market is promising with rapid development and broad prospects (Wang et al. 2014).
In 2019, the global installed capacity of CSP continued to grow, but at a small rate. The global installed capacity of CSP has increased by 381.6MW, and the total installed capacity has increased to approximately 6451MW on the basis of 6069MW in 2018, an increase of 6.29%. Among them, CSP in China has newly installed 200MW, accounting for 52.41% of the world''s total new installed capacity. China accounts for more than half of the newly installed capacity, and its activity and influence in the global CSP industry continue to increase (CSPPLAZA 2020a).
Cumulative installed capacity and proportion of various power sources in 2019
The CSP technology in China has a wide range of technical routes, basically covering international mainstream technical routes such as parabolic trough (PT), solar tower (ST), solar dish (SD), and linear Fresnel reflector (LFR). Apart from those mentioned above, Fresnel-like, secondary reflection ST, etc., which are the first to be applied internationally, are included as well. It marks that China''s CSP technology has reached the international leading level to a certain extent. Table 1 shows some large-scale CSP projects that have been put into operation and will be put into operation in China.
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