Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-05-12
With the Chinese government beginning to push urbanization programs, solar power firms are hoping to turn the nation's farmland into a new market for building generation facilities.
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| Solar panels in a village in Jiangxi province. (Photo/Xinhua) |
With the Chinese government beginning to push urbanization programs, solar power firms are hoping to turn the nation's farmland into a new market for building generation facilities.
Li Hejun,
chairman of Hanergy Holdings Group, predicts that the increasingly mature
photovoltaic market in China's rural areas will attract 10 trillion yuan
(US$1.6 trillion) of investment over the next 10 years.
Yet Ren
Haoning, a research fellow at China Investment Consulting, believes that even
with the government's support the policy cannot drag the solar industry out of
its current slump, which has been caused by excess capacity.
The
nation's solar energy firms have so far been relying on overseas markets, with
80% of their raw materials being imported and 90% of their finished solar cells
and other components being shipped abroad. Market players have urged the
industry to shift its focus to the domestic market, especially business
opportunities associated with the urbanization program.
According
to a study of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, solar power
operations hardly exist in China's rural areas, as a result of which the
ministry has decided to launch a comprehensive program to bring solar energy
generation to the countryside.
The program
will inject a powerful momentum to the development of the photovoltaic
industry, says Jiang Ping, research fellow at the China Photovoltaic Industry
Alliance.
One
potential market is solar powered agriculture sheds, whose roofs are covered
with solar cells and can cultivate vegetables while generating power at the
same time. Agricultural sheds currently take up a total of 50 million acres,
and could be capable of generating power worth 250 billion yuan (US$41 billion)
a year if they can be transformed into mini solar energy plants.
Yet the
sheds are just a fraction of the huge market potential associated with the
program. The most promising aspect is the prospect of placing generators on
the tops of farmhouses. At present, the nation's houses cover a total space of
40 billion square meters, 20% of which is suitable for the installation of
solar cells.
Jiang Ping
has cautioned that conditions are not right for the industry in the
countryside, due to a lack of experience and adequate technology. It would
typically take 20 years to recover an investment in solar power facilities, a
fact which has dampened investors' interest. The final problem is how to
incorporate the excess power into established power grids away from major
cities.
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