Suntech Power CEO sees potential to build 100 GW on rooftops
May 31, 2012 Category Alternative energy, Environment
The government should roll out policies to develop the rooftop solar power market in coastal eastern and southern regions. That would help relieve the loss-making solar panel industry’s overcapacity, said Shi Zhengrong, Chief Executive of Suntech Power, the world’s largest producer of panels. The nascent market segment has a potential 100 GW of generating capacity, 20 times the estimated growth in China’s solar power capacity this year, Shi told the SNEC International Photovoltaic Power Generation Conference in Shanghai. But implementing this means a challenge to the monopolistic power of the two state-owned electricity-distribution firms, State Grid Corporation of China and China Southern Power Grid. They are now the only intermediaries between power generators and end users. Owners of the rooftops of residential and commercial buildings who mounted solar panels would be able to sell the power they generated in excess of their own consumption to the power grids. “This is not easy, since it involves major reform of our power generation and distribution industry, but the solar industry must keep sending letters to the government year after year to push the reform,” Shi said. He hoped the policies could be rolled out within two years. “The danger is that the solar industry may suffer from the same problem as the wind farm industry, where over 10% of power output cannot be dispatched to the grid,” Shi added. China’s solar panel industry, which exports about 85% of its output, has built too many plants and has suffered from a slowdown in growth in overseas markets. Its biggest market, Europe, has cut back subsidies amid its sovereign debt problems. Dr Henning Wicht, Solar Sector Analyst at research firm iSuppli, projected global prices of solar panels would fall a further 20% this year after declining 38% last year. He also forecast that the growth rate of solar panel installations worldwide would drop to less than 10% this year and next year, from 55% last year, before recovering to between 20% and 30% between 2014 and 2016, the South China Morning Post reports.
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