China had a cumulative capacity of 43.2 GW photovoltaic installed by the end of 2015. Most of the new capacity from 2015 has been installed in the sparsely populated provinces in the northwest of the country.
The latest numbers of the National Energy Administration of China show an addition of 15.1 GW in 2015. China is now the country with the world’s largest PV capacity. Germany featured an installed capacity of almost 40 GW by, thus being on the second place worldwide.
According to PV Magazine, China’s PV capacity grew 13-fold since 2011. Still, Germany produces more power from PV than China does, even though most parts of China receive better solar radiation. Due to the construction of PV-projects far away from load centers, grid extension in China lags behind. Many of the newly erected PV power plants do not feed electricity into the grid. The National Energy Administration estimates that roughly 10 % of the installed PV-capacity is affected by this. With 31 and 26 percent respectively, especially the provinces Gansu and Xinjiang in the northwest of China have high numbers of idle PV-capacity which is not connected to the grid.
