Newly added photovoltaic installations declined in the first half of 2026, driving the restructuring of industry regions and value chains.
According to Foresee Energy, the National Energy Administration released the detailed photovoltaic installation data of all provinces in the first half of 2026 on August 14. The total new capacity reached 71.768 million kW, down 66% year on year.
What is more worth exploring than the figures themselves is the structure behind them. The new capacity of ground-mounted power stations hit 29.55 million kW, down 70% year on year; that of industrial and commercial distributed PV stood at 20.39 million kW, plummeting 77%; that of residential PV reached 21.83 million kW, down 15%. The decline rates of the three business formats vary drastically.
Looking at the national map, regional differentiation is even more striking than the total capacity decline. Yunnan alone added 6.704 million kW of centralized PV installations, accounting for nearly a quarter of the national centralized PV increment. The 7.58 million kW of new installations in Henan all came from distributed PV, with residential PV accounting for 6.715 million kW. Jiangsu ranked first nationwide with a total new capacity of 8.609 million kW, where centralized and distributed PV installations are almost evenly split.
The same set of data reflects three completely different business scenarios. Meanwhile, 5,089 PV-related enterprises across the country deregistered in the first half of the year, up 8.3% year on year. Xiri Technology was claimed 183 million yuan due to contract disputes, with only 3.28 million yuan left in its book capital. The PV base of Quwei Technology in Sixian County, Anhui Province, which was claimed to have an investment of 12.2 billion yuan, ceased operation one or two months after being put into production, with only the sound of rain hitting the roof left in the factory area.
This is not a full-scale retreat of the entire industry, but a restructuring of regional development logic.
Of the 7.295 million kW of new installations in Yunnan, 6.704 million kW are centralized PV. This proportion is unique across the country.
Since 2024, Yunnan has issued seven batches of new energy indicators, with the total scale of wind and solar projects exceeding 87GW. The first batch of new energy project development and construction plans for 2026 includes 274 projects with a total installed capacity of 20.944 million kW, among which there are 118 centralized PV projects totaling 11.115 million kW. Chuxiong Prefecture has seen its PV installed capacity exceed 10 million kW, making it the first prefecture-level administrative region in Yunnan to cross this threshold.
The centralized PV sector in Yunnan has a distinct feature: it is almost entirely dominated by central SOEs. Huaneng Group has more than 1.35GW of PV projects in Yunnan. Leading enterprises including LONGi, Tongwei, JA Solar and JinkoSolar have also settled in Yunnan and continued to expand their production capacity. The whole industrial chain, covering polysilicon, monocrystalline silicon, cells, modules and end-use applications, has taken root in Yunnan. Yunnan has a clear goal: to build a “PV hub”.
However, there are hidden concerns behind this model. The revenue of centralized PV is highly dependent on feed-in tariffs and consumption conditions. With the advancement of market-oriented electricity tariff reform, the era of fixed feed-in tariffs has come to an end. Although Yunnan is rich in solar resources and has hydropower for regulation, the capacity of the west-to-east power transmission channels and the electricity tariff fluctuations in the eastern receiving markets directly affect the actual returns of these ground-mounted power stations.
Building a power station is only the first step, and making profits is another matter.
Of the 3.979 million kW of new installations in Xinjiang, 3.941 million kW are centralized PV, and distributed PV only accounts for 38,000 kW. Of the 2.179 million kW of new installations in Ningxia, 2.133 million kW are centralized PV. Of the 762,000 kW of new installations in Gansu, 615,000 kW are centralized PV. Almost all western provinces adopt the centralized PV development route.
This path relies on land and solar resources, as well as the capital of central SOEs and grid transmission channels. However, the incremental space for centralized PV is shrinking. There is an upper limit for available land and grid access capacity in the northwest region. When these resources are fully occupied, what else the western region can rely on for growth is a question that needs to be answered.
The situation in central and eastern China is far more complex than that in the western region.
The 7.58 million kW of new PV installations in Henan all come from distributed PV, among which residential PV accounts for 6.715 million kW. The national new residential PV capacity reached 21.83 million kW, and Henan alone accounts for nearly one third of the total.
The development of residential PV in Henan is supported by two key factors: the huge rural rooftop resources, and the relatively mature grid consumption capacity. State Grid Henan Electric Power Company took the lead nationwide in realizing “group regulation and group control” for millions of distributed PV households. On July 4 this year, the output of wind and solar new energy in Henan hit a record high of 41.4 million kW, accounting for more than 60% of the province’s total electricity load at the same time. But this also means that the power grid in Henan is approaching its consumption limit.
Of the 5.691 million kW of new installations in Guangdong, 4.796 million kW are distributed PV, with industrial and commercial distributed PV as the main force. Guangdong has a large number of industrial parks and high electricity load, so the self-consumption ratio of industrial and commercial rooftop PV is high, making it more resilient to electricity tariff fluctuations. In June, 6,877 new PV projects were filed in Guangdong, with a total capacity of 2178.31MW, including 1,505 industrial and commercial PV projects, mainly concentrated in five cities: Dongguan, Foshan, Zhongshan, Huizhou and Guangzhou. This is an urbanized distributed development path — it does not require vast rural rooftops, but only dense factory buildings.
The situation in Jiangsu is the most special. Of the 8.609 million kW of new installations, 4.119 million kW are centralized PV and 4.489 million kW are distributed PV, with the two almost evenly split. Jiangsu not only has ground-mounted power station resources in coastal tidal flats, but also the most developed industrial and commercial foundation across the country. However, the distributed PV sector in Jiangsu is facing a downturn: the new distributed installed capacity in the first quarter dropped by 51.48% year on year. After the adjustment of the industrial and commercial time-of-use electricity tariff policy, the peak PV output at noon is classified as the low-tariff period, and the electricity purchase cost for power users at noon drops to 0.4 to 0.6 yuan per kWh. The revenue model of a large number of existing projects has been completely overturned.
Henan, Guangdong and Jiangsu, three major distributed PV provinces with three completely different driving forces, are facing the same problem: after the advancement of market-oriented electricity tariff reform, the revenue certainty of distributed PV is disappearing.
Shen Chao, head of the Strategic Development Department of Trina Solar’s subsidiary Trina Home, put it bluntly: The biggest challenge is that the revenue model for investors cannot be determined. No one can accurately predict the mechanism tariff and the future spot electricity tariff.
The maximum power rationing rate in Taishan area, Guangdong exceeds 20%, and every kWh of power that is restricted from generation is due profit. A third-party institution in Guangdong charges about 100,000 yuan for a single grid-related performance report, which has limited impact on large power stations, but further increases the operating pressure for small distributed projects.
Residential PV is the most severely impacted sector. Residential projects do not have stable factory load to support their operation. Under the full grid feed-in mode, electricity tariff fluctuations directly compress revenue. Many enterprises stated that current investment prioritizes high-quality industrial and commercial projects with high self-consumption ratios, and most new residential PV projects are in a wait-and-see state.
The top 15 provinces combined have 60.82 million kW of new installations, accounting for 85% of the national total new PV installed capacity. The market is highly concentrated.
But the connotation of concentration is changing. In the past, “everyone could install PV”, but now “only a few players are qualified to develop PV projects”. Yunnan relies on resource endowment and central SOE endorsement, Henan relies on the penetration rate of rural rooftop PV, Guangdong relies on the industrial and commercial consumption capacity, and Jiangsu relies on the balanced layout of the two business formats.
What about the provinces not ranked in the top 15? Jiangxi added 887,000 kW of new installations, among which the centralized PV capacity is -419,000 kW due to the decommissioning of some PV projects. Heilongjiang only has 169,000 kW of new installations, and Jilin has 482,000 kW. These provinces are not unwilling to develop PV, but cannot develop it — their solar resources are insufficient, grid consumption capacity is inadequate, or the electricity tariff environment cannot ensure economic feasibility.
PV installation development is shifting from “nationwide expansion” to “regional concentration”. This is not driven by policies, but by market choices. After the market-oriented reform of electricity tariffs, the revenue of every PV project needs precise calculation — calculate solar resources, electricity tariffs, consumption capacity, and land costs. Capital pours into regions where the numbers add up, while no one is willing to invest in regions where the projects cannot be economically viable.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. The rapid expansion of PV installations in the past few years was largely driven by policy subsidies and fixed feed-in tariffs. Now as subsidies are phased out and electricity tariffs are marketized, the market is making its own choices. Regions and project types that are not economically viable will be eliminated, and only the remaining ones can truly survive.
The manufacturing end is also going through elimination. The price of polysilicon has dropped from a peak of over 300,000 yuan per ton in 2022 to 31,000 yuan per ton in July this year, a decline of nearly 90%. According to the calculation of CITIC Construction Futures, on July 31, the full-cost profit margins of polysilicon, silicon wafers, cells and modules were -49.98%, -73.45%, -16.27% and 0.18% respectively. LONGi Green Energy expects a net loss of 3.4 billion to 3.8 billion yuan in the first half of the year, Tongwei Co., Ltd. expects a loss of 4.8 billion to 5.4 billion yuan, and JA Solar Technology expects a loss of 2.4 billion to 2.9 billion yuan in the first half of the year.
However, there are exceptions. TCL Zhonghuan narrowed its first-half loss by 22% to 29% year on year, thanks to a year-on-year drop of more than 13% in non-silicon costs in the silicon wafer segment. Hoshine Silicon Industry actively scaled down its PV business and focused on its silicon-based main business, turning losses into profits in the first half of the year. Deye Co., Ltd. expects its net profit in the first half of the year to reach 2.668 billion to 2.728 billion yuan, up more than 75% year on year, completing nearly 85% of its total profit of last year in just six months.
On August 6, eight leading polysilicon enterprises including Tongwei Co., Ltd. and GCL Technology signed the “Anti-Involution Initiative” in Shanghai, promising that the selling price of all their products will not be lower than the full cost. However, previous industry self-discipline efforts have repeatedly ended up as “shaking hands at the meeting, then cutting prices immediately after leaving”.
The difference this time is that the General Rules for Cost Accounting Model of Photovoltaic Industry released on July 27 unifies the cost caliber of the whole industrial chain, and the State Administration for Market Regulation carried out price compliance guidance in Yancheng, Jiangsu on July 31. Policies have set clear standards, but the recovery of market confidence still takes time.
The photovoltaic industry is not experiencing a recession, but a transformation from scale expansion to value restructuring. Only enterprises and regions that can calculate returns clearly, control costs and find their own positioning can have the opportunity to survive to the next cycle.
该文观点仅代表作者本人，36氪平台仅提供信息存储空间服务。
36kr Europe (eu.36kr.com) delivers global business and markets news, data, analysis, and video to the world, dedicated to building value and providing business service for companies’ global expansion.
© 2024 36kr.com. All rights reserved.

source