China’s newly installed capacity of solar power in the first eight months of the year reached 113.2 GW, marking a new record high and surging 154.5% from a year earlier, according to data released by the National Energy Administration.
Chinese solar power generation companies completed 187.2 billion yuan of investment in the eight-month period, surging 82.7% from a year earlier, showed the data.
The rapid growth was mainly due to sliding prices of photovoltaic modules and meanwhile state-owned enterprises have tasks of solar power installations, said industry insiders.
In the first half of the year, silicon material prices tumbled by more than 70% from 240,000 yuan per tonne to about 60,000 yuan per tonne, which led to price falls in the whole supply chain, and tender prices of modules have declined from about 2 yuan per watt to about 1.13 yuan per watt.
China’s solar industry is expected to maintain robust development in the second half of the year, Liu Yiyang, deputy secretary general of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, said recently.