China’s solar installations down 20% YoY in Jan-Sep

SHANGHAI, Nov 20 (SMM) – China’s National Energy Administration announced on Monday that the country installed 34.5 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity in the first three quarters of the year, down 19.7% compared to a year ago.

Utility-scale solar accounted for 17.4 GW, down 37.2% year on year while distributed solar jumped 12% on a yearly basis to 17.1 GW.

As of the end of September, China’s cumulative capacity stood at 164.7 GW — made up of 117.9 GW of utility-scale solar PV and another 46.8 GW of distributed generation capacity.

China announced in June that it cap new distributed (small-scale) solar projects for 2018 and reduce its solar Feed-in Tariff (FiT).