Shunfeng Photovoltaic International Ltd, the solar-cell maker whose shares surged 17-fold in 2013, plans to invest about 25 billion yuan ($4.1 billion) to develop its own solar projects this year.
Shunfeng will install 3 gigawatts this year as part of a plan to add 10 gigawatts in the three years through 2016, Chairman Zhang Yi said today by phone from Hong Kong. The company has about 890 megawatts now. Most of the new plants will be ground-mounted in the northwest in areas including Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu and Inner Mongolia, he said.
China will speed up the development of renewable energy to try to curb the country’s deadly smog, state broadcaster China Central Television reported today. The world’s biggest polluter plans to add 14 gigawatts of solar power in 2014 compared with 10 gigawatts scheduled last year.
“The solar market has broad prospects” given that power consumption is rising and the government is targeting 35 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2015, Zhang said.
Solar power projects in China have “considerable and foreseeable returns,” said Wang Xiaoting, a Beijing-based analyst from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
China Development Bank Corp. will lend 980 million yuan ($162 million) to units of Shunfeng for 130 megawatts of projects in Xinjiang, Shunfeng said on January 7.
The company expects to complete its 3 billion-yuan acquisition of Wuxi Suntech Power Co, the main unit of what was once the world’s largest photovoltaic maker, by the end of February after shareholders and Hong Kong’s securities’ regulator approve, Zhang said.
