Taiwan confirms plan to reach 20 GW of cumulative solar by 2025

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Taiwan’s Bureau of Energy (BOE), part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MoEA), has confirmed its plans to increase the country’s installed PV capacity from approximately 1.34 GW currently to 20 GW by 2025. Taiwan’s previous solar strategy targeted a cumulative capacity of 8.7 GW by 2030.

According to a press release from BOE, the solar strategy announced last summer will now be implemented thanks to an overall investment of NT$ 992.8 billion ($32.9 billion). As intermediate solar targets the government has set around 1.52 GW of cumulative solar by the end of 2018 and 6.5 GW by 2020.

The new plan is expected to help the country increase the share of renewables in its electricity mix from around 4.8% currently to 20% by 2025, while the share of coal is planned to be reduced from 45.5% to 30%. Of the planned cumulative 20 GW, 17 GW is expected to come from ground-mounted projects, while the remaining 3 GW is forecast to come in the form of rooftop PV installations.

According to the the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power System Programme (IEA PVPS), Taiwan installed 368 MW of new PV systems in 2016.

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In a report released in November 2016, market research company EnergyTrend said the country will have to install about 2-3 GW per year from 2018 to hit 20 GW by 2025, noting that issues related to financing and the acquisition of land — as well as grid and transmission constraints threaten to cap Taipei‘s ambitions.

The government will offer even more attractive rates for distributed-generation projects in remote areas, EnergyTrend said, noting that such policies will significantly boost rooftop build-out through 2018.

Additionally, EnergyTrend found that the island‘s PV module production capacity, which at the time stood at roughly 1.8 GW per year, would be sufficient to meet anticipated domestic demand over that period.

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