Efficiency remains the solar industry’s most powerful lever. Each gain in cell efficiency increases power density, reducing raw material and bill of materials (BOM) consumption and indirectly lowering costs. With module prices under intense pressure and manufacturers fighting to protect margins, higher efficiency has become the clearest way to stand out and keep reducing solar manufacturing costs.
Spanning three consecutive weeks in November 2026, the TaiyangNews High-Efficiency Solar Technologies 2026 Online Conference will focus on the latest advances in TOPCon and back-contact (BC) technologies, with a special focus on next-generation PV and space solar. From improving established production processes to exploring new cell concepts and demanding applications beyond Earth, the event will examine pathways to higher efficiency, competitive manufacturing, and reliable performance.
On November 11, 2026, Day 1 of the conference, Archon Lai, Chief Marketing Officer at China S.C, will speak on the topic: Manufacturing Solutions Across the Evolving Solar Cell Technology.
Registration is free and can be done here.
China Green Development Investment Group (CGDG) has connected its 100 MW molten-salt tower concentrated solar power (CSP) project in Fukang, Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which has now entered trial operation. The project uses an eight-hour molten-salt thermal storage system and a heliostat field comprising 15,697 mirrors with a total reflective area of 580,000 m². The heliostats concentrate solar radiation onto a receiver atop a 236 m tower, heating the molten salt. The plant stores the hot salt and later passes it through a heat exchanger to produce steam that drives a turbine.
The CSP plant is part of Fukang’s 1 GW multi-energy complementary base, which also includes 900 MW of solar PV capacity. It is expected to generate around 120 million kWh annually, save approximately 40,000 tonnes of standard coal and reduce CO₂ emissions by about 140,000 tonnes per year. Cosin Solar supplied the solar field, molten-salt thermal storage, heat-exchange systems, and related technical services.
Last month, POWERCHINA brought its 1 GW Gonghe hybrid PV + CSP project online in Gonghe County, Qinghai Province (see China Solar PV News Snippets).
China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) reported that more than 157 GW of large-scale wind and solar projects had been built in desert, Gobi, and other barren areas by the end of September 2026. The total covers three batches of projects listed between 2021 and 2023, primarily intended to meet local electricity demand. The first batch, totaling 94.53 GW, is largely completed and operational, while more than 34 GW of the second batch and over 29 GW of the third batch have been built.
Separately, China is developing a series of large wind and solar bases, each with a capacity of around 10 GW or more, primarily intended to transmit electricity to other regions. Implementation plans for 14 such bases have been approved, with two already in operation: the northern Tianshan base in Xinjiang and the Tengger Desert base in Ningxia.
SKYWORTH Solar, the PV business arm of Skyworth Group, has aggregated 61 residential distributed PV plants in Shandong into a virtual power plant (VPP) market entity, enabling them to participate in the province’s spot and medium- and long-term electricity markets. The portfolio has a combined capacity of 1.81 MW. It completed its trading declaration on October 31, with aggregated trading conducted on November 1-2. SKYWORTH Solar said this was the first time residential PV systems had completed the full process of forecasting, market declaration, transaction execution, and deviation assessment through aggregation.
The plants were connected through the VPP operations system on SKYWORTH PV’s digital platform, which handles market registration, power forecasting, quantity and price declarations, transaction execution, and deviation management. The system supports PV, energy storage, and charging equipment from different brands and using different communication protocols. SKYWORTH Solar said the system achieved power forecasting accuracy of more than 97% during the transaction.
China’s Ministry of Natural Resources, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and National Forestry and Grassland Administration have jointly issued a notice allowing self-consumption PV systems on agricultural facility roofs, provided the facilities’ land-use category, basic function, and structural form remain unchanged. The systems must not be connected to the grid, and the agricultural facilities must consume all electricity they generate. The provision does not authorize commercial, grid-connected PV plants to be developed under the guise of agricultural facilities.
The policy supplements existing rules rather than broadly opening agricultural land to agrivoltaic projects. Under current NEA regulations, grid-connected PV projects built on agricultural greenhouses and similar facilities remain classified as agrivoltaic projects and are managed as centralized PV power plants. Requirements that PV arrays must not occupy cultivated land and that supporting facilities must obtain construction land approvals remain unchanged.
Sichuan’s Provincial Development and Reform Commission and Sichuan Energy Bureau have issued a three-year action plan calling for more than 13 GW/26 GWh of new-type energy storage projects between 2026 and 2028. Planned additions include 5 GW/10 GWh on the power-source side, 6 GW/12 GWh on the grid side, and at least 2 GW/4 GWh for multi-scenario applications. Sichuan will also accelerate the introduction of a capacity-based pricing mechanism for independent grid-side energy storage and improve charging and discharging price policies and ancillary-services market mechanisms.
The accompanying project list includes 67 independent grid-side energy storage projects totaling 7.16 GW/16.745 GWh. These comprise 17 projects from the first 2025 batch, totaling 1.91 GW/4.02 GWh; 35 projects from the second batch, totaling 3.45 GW/7.425 GWh; and 15 demonstration projects totaling 1.8 GW/5.3 GWh.
TaiyangNews 2024

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