China installs more than 100GW of solar in first half of 2024

China has already installed over 100GW of new solar capacity this year, bringing the country’s total solar fleet to over 700GW.

China’s National Energy Administration this week published its latest national power industry statistics for the first half of 2024, with total power generation capacity reaching 3.07TW.

Total solar generation capacity was up 51.6 per cent year-on-year, reaching a cumulative total of 713GW thanks to the installation of 102.48GW worth of new capacity throughout the first six months of the year – hitting the 100GW mark a month earlier than 2023.

Wind power generation was also up, increasing to 466.71GW total, up 19.9 per cent, though only 25.84GW worth of new capacity was installed.

Combined, Chinese wind and solar generation capacity is edging close to 1.2TW, nearly 40 per cent of the country’s total generating capacity.

Thermal power now accounts for less than half of China’s power generation capacity, with China’s continued deployment of renewable energy capacity continuing to slow the addition of fossil fuels.

Specifically, in the first half of 2024, thermal power – most of which is made up of coal-fired power plants – accounted for 46 per cent of the country’s installed power generation capacity, only a marginal increase over the first half of 2023.

China’s fleet of thermal power stations currently weighs in at 1.4TW, a measly 3.6 per cent growth year-on-year. New thermal power installed in the first half of 2024 amounted to 18.25GW, down 777MW on the first half of 2023.

The capacity numbers reinforce recent power generation numbers which have shown coal-fired electricity falling as hydropower generation increases. If this year’s trends continue – no sure thing, given the risk of variable extreme weather events – coal use could slip in 2024.