China’s solar industry is balancing good news and bad, with a giant insurance company backing Trina Solar’s plan to build a gigawatt (GW) of new production capacity over the next three years, but other developers expressing frustration over construction delays.
“Those kinds of complaints aren’t really new, and are being caused by provincial government interference and other local issues in the many remote locations where new plants are being built,” AltEnergyStocks reports. “While solar power proponents are quite happy to talk about all the money they’ve raised and their big plans for new plant construction, few like to talk about the many troubles they face when they actually try to build those plants.”
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Young warns the country may fall short of its plan to add 35 GW of capacity by the end of this year, after installing only 10 GW as of December 31, 2014. In one of a series of projects backed by Shanghai-based entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Shi Yuzhu, “the bottom line shows that local government officials are playing their usual tricks designed to benefit themselves rather than facilitate business,” he writes. “Such games are quite common in China, especially in less developed provinces like the ones where many solar plants are being built.”
Young concludes that construction difficulties “could wreak havoc on the sales and finances of panel makers and their construction partners.”
