Shouhang bags 100 MW Concentrated Solar Power Tower project in China

Shouhang Hightech Energy Technology Co., Ltd (Shouhang), a leading Concentrated Solar Power project developer and EPC contractor in China, signed the “Cooperation Agreement on the Investment of Jinta 100MW Molten Salt Tower Concentrating Solar Power Project” (agreement) with Jinta County People’s Government of Gansu Province on Feb 21^st 2020.

As agreed, Shouhang, through a subsidiary project SPV, which would be founded in Jinta County, will take over the 100 MW solar thermal project from the previous investor, China Three Gorges New Energy Co., Ltd (Three Gorges).

The project, one of China first batch of 20 pilot Concentrated Solar Power projects granted in 2016, was halted in the past 3 years. With the investment from Shouhang, the project will be restarted and expecting final COD before Dec 30th 2021.

The 20 pilot projects, with total capacity of 1.349 GW, were granted in September of 2016. The investors may enjoy a FiT RMB 1.15/KWh if they can complete the project and connect to the grid by the end of 2018. However, only 3 projects met the deadline, and another 4 projects reached grid connection one year later. Jinta 100MW tower CSP project was one of the remaining 13 projects with no development in the past three and half years.

Aiming to activating the undeveloped pilot projects, the National Energy Administration issued an announcement by the end of Jan 2020, claiming that CSP pilot projects investors will still get a preferable FiT (most likely a little bit lower that RMB 1.15/KWh), if they can complete the project and connect to the grid by the end of 2021. This encourages the confident investors like Shouhang to grab more CSP pilot projects to their investment portfolios.

According to the announcement, Shouhang, through the project SPV, will transfer advance payment of RMB 10,000,000 to the fiscal account of Jinta Government for land lease, in 5 working days following the establishment of the project SPV. After receiving the advance, Jinta Government will re-register the project to the superior administrations for Shouhang, and facilitate other applying procedures in different government departments including planning, land, water & environment, forest, mining, etc. The government will also coordinate and ensure the success transfer between the previous and current investors for the project outcomes and government approval documents, etc. Also, Jinta government will fully support Shouhang to the apply for the FiT and various preferential incentives and subsidies of national and provincial level.

Jinta CSP project is located in Baishuiquan Solar Park of Jinta County, with a land area of 12.95km2.

Currently Shouhang owns a 100MW Tower Plant in operation, two 100MW CSP projects under construction, and two EPC contracts of 50MW CSP projects, accumulating investment of RMB 12 Billion.

Shouhang is one of the leading solar CSP industry players in China. On December 2016, 138 meters receiver tower was lighted firstly, which marked that, Shouhang Dunhuang 1st Phase 10MW molten salt Tower CSP project became the first 24-hours continuous-generation molten salt CSP tower project in Asia and the third molten salt CSP tower project in the world.

And Shouhang 100MW plant is China first 100MW level CSP project and first large-scale molten salt tower CSP plant which was completed on December 28, 2018. It achieved daily output of 1,800 MWh on June 17, 2019.