China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) intends to boost the renewable energy portfolio in the country with 17.8GW of solar installations in 2015.
The revised target is almost 20% more than its original goal of 15GW installations for the year, which was announced last month, reports Reuters.
In 2014, the country had installed around 10.52GW of solar power, which places the recently announced target at a 70% hike.
The initiative is in line with Beijing’s strategy to ‘stabilise and expand the solar application market’ by this year.
Revision of the total installation target for 2015 has instigated a distinct rise in the market shares for domestic solar firms.
Ping An Securities research analyst Zhou Ziguang was quoted by the news agency as saying: "This is good news for the industry.
"The state is hoping to boost solar consumption, although the chance of exceeding the target should not be big."
In 2013, the country had announced its plans to increase its solar capacity by more than four times to 35GW by 2015. Lack of transmission infrastructure is, however, an issue that China seems to be struggling with.
It intends to drive demands for solar energy by promoting construction of distributed solar, which includes rooftop panels and other small-scale installations, but has not been able to set distributed solar target for the year.
Out of the 10.52GW of solar installations in 2014, distributed solar accounted for only 2.52GW of power, which is much less than its announced target of 8GW.
Almost 2% of China’s total power capacity of 1,360GW last year was contributed by 26.52GW of grid-connected solar.
