Companies in China installed a record 12 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels in 2013, almost matching the total amount of solar power in operation in the United States.
Revealing the impressive figure Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) also said China may exceed that in 2014.
The installations were built mostly in China’s sunny, western provinces of Gansu, Xinjiang and Qinghai and make its state-owned power companies the world’s biggest owners of solar assets, the London-based research company said in a statement.
Bloomberg newsagency reporting on the BNEF assessment said China was the biggest solar market last year, surpassing longtime leader Germany.
Chinese installation more than tripled from 3.6GW in 2012, and the nation expects to add 14GW of solar capacity this year, according to BNEF.
“The 2013 figures show the astonishing scale of the Chinese market,” Jenny Chase, lead solar analyst at BNEF, said in the statement.
“PV is becoming ever cheaper and simpler to install, and China’s government has been as surprised as European governments by how quickly it can be deployed in response to incentives.”
Chinese developers rushed to complete projects before the end of the year, when a US$0.17 a kilowatt-hour incentive expired.
Bloomberg reports that may have led to as many as 2.0GW of late-year additions that are not included in the 12GW total.
China led a 28 per cent increase in global solar installations last year of 39GW, and total installation may increase another 20 per cent this year, according to the statement.
Before 2013, no nation had ever installed more than 8.0GW of solar power in a year.
BNEF estimates the global PV market in 2013 to have been 39GW, up 28 per cent from 2012, and expects a further 20 per cent global volume growth in 2014.
This year, the world will install as much PV in 12 months as the cumulative total installed solar from the invention of the photovoltaic module until 2010.
The world’s three largest markets for solar PV in terms of new GW capacity in 2013 were China, Japan and the US, with Germany, for many years the heaviest investor in solar, a distant fourth.
