China's solar sector produced a cluster of project and policy developments in early November 2026, from a new concentrated solar power plant in Xinjiang to regulatory clarifications on agricultural rooftops and a milestone for residential virtual power plants in Shandong, according to a November 6 roundup from TaiyangNews.

CGDG Connects Xinjiang Molten-Salt Tower Plant

China Green Development Investment Group (CGDG) has connected its 100 MW molten-salt tower concentrated solar power project in Fukang, Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The plant has now entered trial operation.

The facility combines an eight-hour molten-salt thermal storage system with a heliostat field of 15,697 mirrors, providing a total reflective area of 580,000 square meters.

The heliostats concentrate solar radiation onto a receiver atop a 236-meter 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 forms 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 cut 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.

The project follows another hybrid milestone last month, when POWERCHINA brought its 1 GW Gonghe hybrid PV plus CSP project online in Gonghe County, Qinghai Province.

Desert and Gobi Build-Out Passes 157 GW

The first batch, totalling 94.53 GW, is largely completed and operational. 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 Aggregates Residential Rooftops Into Shandong Market Entity

SKYWORTH Solar, the PV business arm of Skyworth Group, has aggregated 61 residential distributed PV plants in Shandong into a virtual power plant market entity, allowing them to participate in the province's spot and medium- and long-term electricity markets.

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. The company said the system achieved power forecasting accuracy of more than 97% during the transaction.

Agricultural Rooftops: Self-Consumption Only

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 of PV systems on agricultural facility roofs, provided the facilities' land-use category, basic function, and structural form remain unchanged.

The conditions are strict. The systems must not be connected to the grid, and the agricultural facilities must consume all the 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 Targets More Than 13 GW of New-Type Storage

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.

Efficiency in Focus as Module Prices Face Pressure

The roundup opens with a broader industry theme: efficiency remains the solar industry's most powerful lever. Each gain in cell efficiency increases power density, reducing raw material and bill of materials 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 manufacturing costs.

Against that backdrop, the TaiyangNews High-Efficiency Solar Technologies 2026 Online Conference will run across three consecutive weeks in

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