ACC completes 19 MW BIPV project in China

ACC did not disclose how much it invested in the project at the Tsuneishi Zhoushan shipyard in Zhejiang province. It also did not reveal which company supplied the 72,000 solar panels for the installation in Zhoushan, a municipality that is situated in an archipelago off the coast of the city of Ningbo, south of Shanghai.

The renewables developer now owns the project and will operate it for a period of 25 years, according to an online statement. The installation is expected to generate roughly 418 GWh of electricity over its lifetime.

Tsuneishi is the world’s sixth-biggest shipbuilder and was established in Japan in 1903. It set up its Chinese subsidiary — Tsuneishi Zhoushan Shipbuilding — in 2013. The shipyard decided to use PV modules to replace its rooftop, which was already scheduled for full renovation. It will use the electricity to power its offices and other facilities. It claims that the new BIPV project is the biggest solar project to be built at a shipyard.

The Zhoushan BIPV project is the second solar project that Hong Kong-based ACC has completed in eastern China in recent weeks, underscoring its growing focus on distributed-generation PV development in the country's coastal provinces. In late July, the company — which has a CNY 500 million ($74.4 million) credit line with China Kangfu International Leasing, as well as a $40 million financing arrangement with Goldman Sachs — connected 4.05 MW of rooftop PV capacity to the grid in Rongcheng, Shandong province, for Shandong Huali Electric Motor.

In March, it started building a 14 MW rooftop PV array in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. The project is part of a cooperation agreement it recently signed with Longi Solar to develop 300 MW of solar capacity throughout China. ACC also revealed plans in February to build an unspecified amount of rooftop PV capacity at a facility owned by Nanjing Fujitsu Computer Electronic Information in eastern China’s Jiangsu province.

Last December, ACC signed a deal to jointly develop 100 MW of solar in cooperation with a unit of Nanjing-based industrial group Sumec. And last November, it agreed to cooperate with Hanwha Q Cells on the development of a 200 MW solar pipeline in China. The deal followed a similar agreement — signed in July 2016 — to build 300 MW of solar capacity in cooperation with Tier-1 PV manufacturer Trina Solar through 2019. Last summer, ACC also formed a partnership with Canadian Solar, under which they will jointly develop 200 MW of PV capacity in China.