China to Change Rates Earned by Solar Farms, PV-Tech Reports

China plans to set four rates that solar-power plants can earn for selling electricity to grid operators, compared with two currently, PV-Tech news reported on its website yesterday, citing people it didn’t identify.

The prices for utility-scale generation will be based on regions, and they no longer will be a fixed tariff of 1 yuan (16 U.S. cents) a kilowatt-hour everywhere except in Tibet, where they get 1.15 yuan, according to the report. The lowest price will be 0.75 yuan a kilowatt-hour in four areas of Qinghai province, the report said. The other rates will be 0.85 yuan, 0.95 yuan and 1 yuan a kilowatt-hour, PV-Tech said.

The government also plans to set a rate of 0.35 yuan a kilowatt-hour for distributed solar-power projects. Such projects would have less than 6 megawatts of capacity and would be connected to grids with voltage of as much as 10 kilovolts.

The National Development and Reform Commission has been seeking advice from solar-power generation companies. Two calls and a fax to the NDRC seeking comment went unanswered.

To contact the reporter on this story: Feifei Shen in Beijing at fshen11@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net