OREANDA-NEWS. November 11, 2013. To implement the State Council's Opinions on Promoting the Healthy Development of the Photovoltaic Industry and further improve financial services to support the distributed photovoltaic (PV) power generation, China Development Bank (CDB) organized a meeting today in Beijing to promote the financing for distributed PV power generation demonstration zones.

Over 150 people from the National Energy Administration (NEA), energy administrating departments of Tai'an, Shandong and Ningbo, Zhejiang and PV equipment manufacturing and developing enterprises attended the meeting.

Distributed PV power generation refers to the kind of PV power generation that is done by PV power generation systems built or installed at or near the users' premises. The users' ends generate and consume power themselves and the surplus electricity is sent to the grid to be balanced and regulated in the power distribution grid system. It is a kind of power construction and operation method that is different from the traditional ones that involve centralized generation, big power grids and long distance HV transmission. During the meeting, an official from NEA elaborated on the ideas for making the policies, the direction of future policies and the main development goals.

Officials from local energy administration departments introduced their respective regional development programs, supportive methods and difficulties. Development enterprises shared the financing structures that they have designed for the demonstration zone. CDB presented its financial supporting policies for distributed PV power generation. Attendees of the meeting made extensive exchange of opinions on distributed PV power generation policies, planning, investment sources, trading structures and the mode of financing and they contributed a lot of practical and feasible opinions and suggestions. The meeting boosted the communication between government, financial institutions and enterprises and laid a good foundation for the financing and construction of distributed PV power generation demonstration parks and for realizing the goal set by the state government to put into production 10 million kilowatts of PV power generation capacities this year.

Since the beginning of this year, the development of distributed PV power generation has attracted high degree of attention from the State Council. CDB and NEA issued together Opinions on Financial Services to Support Distributed PV Power Generation that clarified the direction, objects and conditions of financial support for distributed PV power generation. CDB will focus on providing financial services and guaranteeing the scales of credit funds for new energy demonstration cities, green energy counties and distributed PV power generation application demonstration zones organized and constructed by the state. While establishing and optimizing the risk management mechanism for loans to distributed PV power generation, the bank actively provides diversified credit product support to qualified investors of distributed PV power generation projects in order to promote the healthy development of the distributed PV power generation industry.

As China's key medium and long-term investment and financing bank that serves national strategies, CDB has made PV power generation one of the key industries to support in recent years. During the 2010-2012 period, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of CDB's balance of loan to the PV power generation sector reached 135%. Up to the end of August 2013, the bank has issued an accumulated loan of 48.1 billion yuan, of which 19 billion has been used to support upstream equipment manufacturers to build PV power generation projects, accounting for 46% of the bank's balance of loan into the entire PV industry. The building of those projects has effectively eased the problems caused by overcapacity of upstream manufacturers. Right now, domestic installed PV power generation capacity funded by CDB's loans accounts for over 60% of China's total of large installed PV capacity that are connected to the grid. At the same time, the bank has also been supporting domestic manufacturers to set up projects aim at “going abroad” and the total capacity so far is 728,000 kw. This has expanded international markets for domestic manufacturers.