In 2017, China's new pv installed capacity exceeded 53GW and the cumulative installed capacity both ranked first in the world

Among them, photovoltaic power stations were 33.62 million kW, up 11% year on year; Distributed pv reached 194.4 million kw, up 3.7 times year on year. By the end of December, the accumulative installed capacity exceeded 130GW, and both the newly added and accumulative installed capacity ranked first in the world.

"The scale of new photovoltaic installations continues to expand, distributed photovoltaic power generation explodes, the proportion of electricity generation continues to increase, and the problem of light abandonment is effectively alleviated." Cheng Chenlu, director of the New and renewable Energy Department of the National Energy Administration, summed it up at the symposium on "2017 Development Review and 2018 Situation Outlook" hosted by China Photovoltaic Industry Association on January 24.

Although the pv industry achieved good results in 2017, it is also facing challenges from renewable energy tariff surcharge gap continues to expand, international trade situation and other aspects. In addition, the industry overheating problem also needs to be vigilant.

Distribution has exploded

In the past year, photovoltaic power generation, light abandonment rate rose and fell, distributed photovoltaic power generation is explosive growth, photovoltaic power generation cost further reduced, photovoltaic "affordable Internet" era is not far away.

China's cumulative photovoltaic power generation capacity reached 118.2 billion kilowatt-hours, up 78.6 percent year on year, according to data on 2017 new energy grid connection released by the National Energy Administration on Jan. 24.

At the same time, 7.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity was abandoned, with the light abandonment rate of 6%, down 4.3 percentage points year-on-year, alleviating the light abandonment problem to a certain extent.

In northwest China, except Shaanxi province, the light abandonment rate decreased, while in Xinjiang and Gansu, the most serious light abandonment rate was 28.2 KWH and 1.85 billion KWH, respectively. The light abandonment rates were 22% and 20%, respectively, with a decrease of nearly 10 percentage points.

In addition, distribution has become a new bright spot of market development in 2017. Data released by the National Energy Administration showed that the newly installed distributed photovoltaic power generation in 2017 exceeded 19GW, more than 360% year on year, far exceeding the total installed distributed photovoltaic power generation in five years, accounting for more than 36% of the newly installed power generation. Among them, Zhejiang, Shandong and Anhui provinces accounted for 45.7% of the newly installed distributed PHOTOVOLTAIC power.

In the distributed explosion growth, become a gratifying variable at the same time, the cost of photovoltaic power generation further reduced.

According to Cheng Chenlu, the backbone enterprises through black silicon, PERC, double-side power generation and other technologies to the existing production lines for technical transformation, the new N-type battery, HIT battery production lines, single crystal, polycrystal battery average conversion efficiency has reached 21.3% and 18.8% respectively, up more than 0.5% year on year, far higher than the previous average efficiency improvement; Continuous technological progress in diamond wire cutting also reduces costs; At the same time, the trend of intelligent photovoltaic manufacturing is obvious, the level of production automation and digitalization is constantly improving, and the amount of labor per unit output is significantly decreased.

"Production costs and prices are falling fast, especially in pv module and system prices. In terms of investment costs, it is still in a relatively rapid process of decline. From 2007 to 2017, we can see that the price of pv modules and systems fell by around 90%." Wang Bohua, vice president and secretary general of China Photovoltaic Industry Association, said: "The development of efficient technology is very fast. From 2005 to 2015, the improvement of cell conversion efficiency was about 0.3 percent per year, but in the past two years, it has risen to more than 1 percent. There is still considerable room for development in this area in 2018-2020."

Affordable Access is not far off

While the benchmark feed-in price of photovoltaic power generation continues to decline, the competitive allocation method has been further promoted in the allocation of photovoltaic resources, fully stimulating the market potential.

"The reasonable price of electricity found in competitive allocation has become the main reference to improve the price policy of photovoltaic power generation, and the price reduction in a circular progressive way to promote each other." Cheng Chenlu said.

According to statistics, in 2017, ordinary photovoltaic power stations reduced the feed-in price by 10% through competitive resource allocation, and the feed-in price in 2018 was further reduced on this basis. At present, under the dual role of electricity price reduction and technological progress, the production cost of photovoltaic modules has been reduced to nearly 2 yuan/watt, system equipment investment has been reduced to nearly 5 yuan/watt of the world leading level.

As investment costs fall and power generation rises, affordable access is not far off, and may even take longer than expected.

"Due to the strong support of national policies, non-technical costs (land costs, network costs) are also accelerating the decline, it is expected that some regions can enter the bidding price of 0.4 yuan - 0.5 yuan/degree, in the region with the best resources may even be quoted lower than 0.4 yuan price. In addition, the growth rate of distributed projects will continue to increase, but it will slow down due to the rapid growth in 2017, and the proportion of projects for self-use will increase." Wang Bohua said.

Prospects of photovoltaic market in 2018, heat Wang Bohua thinks the market will grow, "conservative estimate domestic new power capacity will between 30 gw - 45 gw, including 22 gw has been determined from the ground station, variable is distributed, but distributed market is hard to predict, if distributed market has a good performance, they would not rule out more than 50 gw."

It is reported that the global photovoltaic industry began to pick up after the second half of 2013, after four years of relay process in the Chinese, American and Japanese markets, formed a good development trend. As growth slows in those markets, it remains to be seen whether emerging markets like India and Brazil can pick up the slack.

The industry still has growth problems

Here box "warbler song yan wu", there box problem still exists.

In the view of industry experts, there is no effective mechanism to solve the subsidy gap in the photovoltaic industry in the short term. In addition, the problem of light abandonment and power rationing in northwest China is still serious, and may extend to north China or central China. In addition, the momentum of domestic production capacity is still relatively strong, industrial development risks of overheating.

It is reported that with the continuous expansion of installed scale, the additional gap of electricity price of renewable energy continues to expand, and the situation of abandoning light and limiting power is still severe. By the end of 2017, the gap in photovoltaic subsidies reached 100 billion yuan, according to estimates by the Ministry of Finance.

In addition, the management system of photovoltaic industry needs to be improved.

Cheng Chenlu said that due to the implementation of the "first build, first serve" policy in some areas, promoting the development of the photovoltaic power industry has also brought about the problem of super-scale construction of the project, the explosive growth of distributed power generation makes it necessary to further clarify the management mode.

Therefore, in the next step, the National Energy Administration plans to further promote the reduction of electricity price, further reduce the benchmark grid price of photovoltaic power generation, and adjust the electricity price in 2018.

"Accelerate subsidy regression through competitive allocation, give full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation, establish competitive project allocation system, and take the feed-in price as the main competition condition. The leader plan and distributed power generation transaction, respectively, put forward the reduction of the on-grid electricity price, through the market to find the price, start the special supervision of the photovoltaic market, standardize the photovoltaic market environment, to achieve the survival of the fittest industry. Cheng Chenlu said.

Therefore, the National Energy Administration plans to launch the photovoltaic affordable Internet demonstration base in 2018, to further promote technological progress and the reduction of non-technical costs, and to play a leading role in the demonstration of affordable Internet; In addition, it will improve the management system of the photovoltaic industry and control the progress and pace of project construction. Implement environmental monitoring and evaluation mechanism, improve power generation scale management mechanism, formulate photovoltaic poverty alleviation and distributed photovoltaic power generation management measures as soon as possible, and realize standardized and institutionalized management of photovoltaic power generation.

In addition, through the implementation of renewable energy quota system, the target task of local government and relevant enterprises to absorb renewable energy, further improve the price policy and market transaction mechanism, mobilize the enthusiasm of all subjects to absorb renewable energy; We will enhance the capacity of the power system to absorb renewable energy by strengthening the construction of power transmission channels and implementing a national procurement and preferential transfer system for renewable energy.