China’s National Energy Administration has confirmed that it will be investing $435 million worth of subsidies into solar projects this year.
Beijing will set an annual cap, for the first time, on solar subsidies in a bid to limit the amount of subsidised solar projects and to ease the backlog of payment which stands at 120 billion yuan ($17.3 billion).
A draft document which appeared during a talk between the central authorities and solar industry stakeholders states that $108.62 million of the $435 million is to go into rooftop projects which will amount to 3.5W of the new capacity, with the rest of the money being assigned to solar stations.
Beijing has been striving to boost competition in the solar industry by getting rid of low efficiency projects whilst in the middle of a plunge in equipment costs and surge in production capacity.
The energy regulator had said that last month it will give priority to the construction of solar and wind projects which can operate without subsidies this year.
At the end of 2018, China had installed solar power stations of 174 GW capacity and had generated around 177.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in the entire year.
