China has added 52.6 GW of solar energy in the first nine months of 2022, says the National Energy Administration (NEA) at an online press conference on Monday. By the end of September, the cumulative installed capacity of solar power has amounted to 358 GW.
Solar power additions in the first three quarters of 2022 have almost exceeded the total installed capacity in 2021, which stood at 54 GW.
Distributed solar power has seen 35.33 GW of additions, dominating solar installations in the reported period. The remaining 17.27 GW has been contributed by utility-scale solar projects.
According to NEA, from Q1-Q3, solar power generated 328 TWh of electricity, up by 32.2% year-on-year.
It is worth noting that renewable energy has dominated power generation capacity additions in the reported period, taking up 78.8 percent of newly added capacity. Except for solar which accounts for 45.8 percent, China has added 15.9 GW of hydro power, 19.24 GW of wind power, and 2.62 GW of biomass.
By the end of September, the total installed capacity of renewable energy has reached 1146 GW, with 406 GW of hydro power, 348 GW of wind power, 358 GW of solar power and 40.6 GW of biomass.
“We have maintained a high utilization rate for renewable energy,” said Wang Dapeng, a senior official at NEA. In the first three quarters of 2022, the hydro power utilization rate of major river basins in China was about 98.6%, up 1.1 percent from 2021. The average utilization rate of wind power was 96.5%, while that of solar PV was 98.2%, up 0.2 percent year-on-year.
Dong Wancheng, Deputy Director of the Development and Planning Department of the NEA, said that China has invested 1.2 trillion yuan ($174.7 billion) in energy projects in the first eight months of 2022, an increase of 16.7 percent year-on-year.
