China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has reported that a record level of residential solar was added in the world’s biggest market last month, with at least 1,301 MW installed on rooftops. The latest numbers took the total capacity installed in the first nine months of the year to 5.27 GW. The figure is based on arrays included on the national subsidy list so the true number could be even higher.
Based on the information submitted by 30 provinces, the newly added 1.3 GW capacity will be included in the overall national subsidy allocation for 5.27 GW. Tibet has not been included in the list for subsidy-scale household projects.
Among provinces, Shandong again led the way, with 579 MW of new residential solar in September 2020, ahead of Hebei and Henan provinces, with 312 MW and 134 MW, respectively. Shadong now has a total installed residential rooftop capacity of 2.27 GW, which comes under the national subsidy program. The region of Hebei follows closely with 1.16 GW of total installed residential capacity. Henan province added a total capacity of 619.3 MW in the first nine months of 2020.
Overall, China installed 11.52 GW of solar capacity during the first half of 2020. Large-scale solar installations accounted for 7.08 GW and distributed solar accounted for 4.43 GW at the end of June. The cumulative installed solar capacity reached 216 GW at the end of June 2020, out of which 149 GW accounted for centralized grid-connected solar capacity and 67 GW for distributed solar capacity.
