Solar energy development in China—A review

Abstract

The steady and maintainable electric power provides the development momentum of a country's industrialization, which is indispensable to every country at present. It is well known that China is the largest developing country in the world. With the rapid development of economy and society, energy demand of Chinese society is increasing in an incredible speed, i.e., the annual accumulative total capacity of electric energy is about 0.1 billion kW, and the most of them is provided by the fossil fuel resource, and the share is about 90% in China. Certainly, it is a very inappropriate energy structure, so the sustainable development of country is impossible in future, the status must be improved in order to achieve sustainable development. Fortunately, China has large country area, and there are abundant solar resources. Development and application of solar energy have been regarded by the government and ordinary people, and they thought that solar energy can provide more and more electric energy in future, and more and more actual examples have been applied in the last decades, which are supported by central government and local governments. This paper discusses the distribution zone and current developmental situation of solar energy in China. Then, some application practice is described, such as solar energy greenhouse, solar energy hearth, solar water heater, solar lighting system, solar water pump, distributed generation (DG), grid-connect photovoltaic generation (GPG) and wind–solar hybrid system. The policies and law of China central government and local governments are described in the following paragraph. At the end, the developmental prospect of photovoltaic (PV) in future China and the development barriers and recommendations are introduced.