China Installs Nearly 10 Gigawatts Of Solar In First Quarter, Up 22%

[FarCenter]

China’s National Energy Administration announced on Tuesday that the country installed an impressive 9.65 gigawatts (GW) of new solar PV capacity in the first quarter of 2018, up 22% on the same period a year earlier and up on analysts’ projections.

At a press conference held on Tuesday, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) published new data revealing the country’s solar PV performance for the first quarter. The data comes to us courtesy of Asia Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory, (AECEA), based in Beijing, which covers the Chinese solar industry closer than many non-Chinese analysts are capable of doing.

Specifically, China installed a total of 9.65 GW worth of new solar PV capacity in the first quarter, made up of 1.97 GW worth of utility-scale solar capacity, and 7.68 GW worth of distributed solar capacity. This represents a 22% increase on the same quarter a year earlier, however, this doesn’t tell the whole story.

Frank Haugwitz, Director of the AECEA, explained that China’s utility-scale segment actually decreased by 64% in the first quarter, as compared to a year earlier, while the country’s distributed solar segment increased by a mind-boggling 217%.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/24/china-installs-nearly-10-gigawatts-of-solar-in-first-quarter-up-22/

For comparison, modern nuclear reactors or large steam plants are about 1 gigawatt each. So 10 gigawatts is a meaningful amount of solar capacity. Of course, that is solar peak output, and not the average power output over 24 hours.

[Blue_Adept]

1. We are going to be / are already so left behind on this kind of project

All those opportunities lost.

And I'll blame government (though they're bigly responsible) less than I will business. The fact that with all the knowledge that Exxon, Mobil and others had that they didn't buy into all of this early and in a big way shows what absolutely lazy and bad businesses that they are.

It's like watching what Saudi Arabia is doing now. They know the end for oil is coming and they're shifting away.

But we just keep guzzling. Grasshopper and the ant.

[FarCenter]

2. Producing silicon solar cells in the US is uneconomic

Making the materials is costly due to many environmental regulations. The manufacturing of the individual solar cells and then building them into larger modules requires a lot of labor.

So US companies and the US Government invested a lot in trying to do things like make thin film solar cells using other materials systems and which could be manufactured by automated processes and which had larger area to minimize assembly costs. None of which actually resulted in manufactured modules that were as cheap or efficient as the Chinese silicon solar cells.

[NewJeffCT]

3. Just imagine

if we had turned our attention to solar research & development when Carter installed solar panels on the White House and also worked on wind power. The US would likely be energy independent, or close to it, by now. Heck, we could be exporting power to neighboring countries, or selling solar/wind tech all over the world.

Instead, Reagan took down the solar panels and we pissed away the opportunity.