Solar Insights: China lifts PV target to 35GW by Giles Parkinson

The Chinese government has lifted its solar PV installation target for the fourth time in the last 15 months, and now expects 35GW of solar PV to be installed in the country by 2015. This is up from an original target of just 5GW, which was then raised to 10GW, 15GW and 21GW. According to Shi Dinghuan, the president of the Chinese Renewable Energy Society and a counselor on the State Council, as much as 10GW will be installed in 2013 alone, adding to the 6.5GW that has already been installed.

Shi told Bloomberg in a telephone interview that installing solar PV would help reduce reliance on fossil fuels blamed for greenhouse gases and the record smog levels recorded in Beijing this month. “We’ve got more pressure to save energy and reduce emissions as smog worsens due to pollution,” he said. China allocated 13 billion yuan ($2 billion) in subsidies for domestic solar project developers in 2012, the official Xinhua News Agency reported last month. Bloomberg said interest in renewable energy is getting a boost as Beijing warned the city’s 20 million people to prepare for at least another day of smog, and officials closed some factories and ordered government cars off the road as pollution remained at hazardous levels.

Solar thermal with storage

The first large scale solar thermal plant with full energy storage in California has been given the go ahead, after Californian utility PG&E agreed to a power purchase agreement and the local utilities commission gave its rubber stamp. The 150MW Rice Solar Energy Project, to be constructed by Solar Reserve, will feature solar tower technology with up to ten hours of storage capabilities through the use of molten salts when it is built in California’s Sonoran Desert by 2016. PG&E and other Californian utilities are required to source 25 per cent of the energy from renewables by 2015, and 33 per cent by 2020.

The utility commission said the solar energy storage technology would enhance grid stability and facilitate the integration of other renewable energy resources such as wind, solar PV and direct steam solar thermal. "Eight to ten hours of fully dispatchable storage is quite impressive and offers significant benefits to the system that we don't yet know how to quantify fully, but there's definitely value there,” said one commissioner.