Sky Solar Breaks Ground on the 60MW PV Plant For Xinjiang

Sky Solar Holdings, an international PV project developer with headquarters in Shanghai, China, has broken ground on its 60MW PV facility which represents the first phase of its planned 800MW PV grid-connected project.

Located in Xinjiang province in China, the project is being built on the Gobi Desert which covers around 1.2 million square meters and has excellent conditions to facilitate grid-connection. It was designed and will be constructed by Sky Solar. The company has also partnered with an undisclosed domestic EPC company for the project.

According to Sky Solar, Xinjiang is rich in natural solar resources with between 2,500 and 3,500 average sunshine hours annually, ranking it second in the country. This sunshine, coupled with the vast amount of land available, makes it an ideal location for the development of large-scale PV plants.
Commenting on the location of the project, Weili Su, president of Sky Solar stated:

“With the concern and support from all levels in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, we believe the local PV industry, and the development of PV power stations in Xinjiang will develop and grow very quickly. For the design, construction and operation of PV power stations, Sky Solar will go all out to guarantee both the quality and quantity of these projects.

Sky Solar places a great value on the natural resources available in Xinjiang and the important role that Xinjiang will play in the solar PV market in the coming two years. We will continue to promote the excellent local project development opportunities and begin by laying a solid foundation in Xinjiang.”

Commenting on the outlook of Sky Solar’s plans for China, Su added, ““Globally, China is a key area of focus for the global strategy of Sky Solar, and as such we attach a great importance and respect to the Chinese government’s policy and PV guidelines and sincerely hope that Sky Solar can be provided with the opportunities to make significant contributions to China’s solar PV industry through our own technology and operational capacities. In the future, Sky Solar will also look to successively develop PV power stations in more areas of China!”

Over the summer, the Chinese government raised the country’s PV installation target, from 15GW to 21GW by 2015. After a slow start to the year and in line with this target, IMS Research has forecast a late surge in Chinese PV installations in the second half of 2012 with more than 4GW of PV installations to be completed.

Furthermore, NPD Solarbuzz reports that PV projects on China’s agricultural land are playing a key role in the country’s rapidly growing distributed PV power generation segment. It is currently tracking over 300MW of agricultural PV projects in the country in its China Deal Tracker report.