Kunming will let a solar factory restart only if 55 GW of capacity dies first

Regulators recognised 1.67 GW of a 20 GW ingot project and suspended the rest, demanding three gigawatts retired for every one resumed.

The Kunming Development and Reform Commission has recognised only 1.67 GW of Yunnan Yuze New Energy's 20 GW monocrystalline ingot project in Dongchuan district as completed capacity, suspending the remaining 18.33 GW. To resume construction, Yuze must secure the retirement of three gigawatts of existing photovoltaic manufacturing capacity for every gigawatt it adds. Applied to the suspended portion, that implies removing about 54.99 GW of existing capacity. The project was registered in February 2023, construction began that April, and part of the first phase entered production in 2024.

This is the enforcement edge of the policy this site wrote about yesterday. Beijing's campaign against what it calls involution — self-defeating overcapacity and below-cost selling — has until now operated through voluntary standards and compliance meetings. A provincial commission freezing a specific named project behind a specific retirement ratio is a different instrument entirely.

For ENERGY the reading is uncomfortable but straightforward. The overcapacity being removed is the same overcapacity that produced the cheapest solar modules in history. Wright's law learning is banked and cannot be repealed, but the portion of today's price that came from too many factories chasing too few orders is not learning, and this is what its removal looks like in practice. The module price series is at manyminded.com/curve/solarModule.

Two limits stated by the source itself: the 3-for-1 condition is a project-specific requirement, not yet a general rule for new factories in Yunnan, and no deadline was set for completing the reduction. Whether this becomes precedent is the thing to watch.

Source: pv magazine