Yingli Green Energy, another Chinese solar company whose shares are traded in the U.S. market, doesn't want to be left behind in what appears to be a rush to turn China into a booming solar energy market.
The company today said it has signed agreements to build new factories and construct 300 megawatts of solar power plants. Yingli's announcement followed those made last week by Suntech Power and Renesola to work on roughly 2.3 gigawatts of solar power farms in various Chinese provinces.
The Chinese companies are counting on generous subsidies from the central government to help pay for the installation and operation costs. Back in March, China announced incentives that the government said would subsidize nearly half of the cost of putting solar on buildings (minimum project size would have to be 50 kilowatts).
Yesterday, the government announced another set of incentives for subsidizing 50 percent to 70 percent of the cost of installing solar power plants, but this new set of incentives would apply to larger projects (minimum size would have to be 300 kilowatts). The government didn't say whether the new incentives would only apply only to ground-mounted projects.
Yingli said it would form a joint venture with Hainan Provincial Development Holding Co., a state-owned company, to build factories to produce 100 megawatts of silicon ingots, wafers, cells and panels in Haikou, Hainan province.
The solar company would hold an 80 percent stake in the joint venture, called Hainan Yingli New Energy Resources Co.
Yingli also has agreed to form a second joint venture with Hainan Provincial Development to build and operate grid-tied solar power farms in the province. The province's utility, Hainan Provincial Water Conservancy & Power Group Co. would also take part in the joint venture, which is called Hainan Green Island Power Co.
Yingli plans to hold a 20 percent stake in Green Island Power. Green Island Power already has a project pipeline: it's set to develop up to 300 megawatts of projects from 2009 to 2011, Yingli said.
Yingli said it plans to work with a subsidiary of China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding for develop on-grid solar power plants in China and elsewhere in the world.
Also today, Suntech said it has lined up a developer to develop 500 megawatts of ground-mounted and rooftop projects. Suntech said the projects might include some of the 1.8 gigawatts, ground-mounted projects it announced last week.
The developer is China Huadian New Energy Development Co., which would work on financing and overseeing the project development. Suntech would provide the crystalline silicon solar panels and design the systems.
