China to push more wind and solar power into the grid by 2020

Curtailment rates for wind power should be cut from 12% this year to 10% in 2019.

Bloomberg reports that China set three-year targets for allowing more wind and solar power to enter the grid. Curtailment rates for wind power should be cut from 12% this year to 10% next year and then 5% by 2020, whilst rates for solar power should be held below 5% from 2018 to 2020, a document on the Sichuan Energy Regulatory Office said.

According to the report, the rapid addition of panels and windmills forced some electricity distributors to partly block that energy from flowing into their systems. China has had to slow the introduction of renewable power because some grids were not capable of handling big increases.

The country idled about 2.9% of the solar power capacity in the first nine months of this year, compared with 5.6% a year earlier. The curtailment rate for wind power was 7.7% during the period.

China will then further reduce development costs of renewable energy and set plans to gradually cut prices for clean power

Read the full report here.