Huge potential

Surrounded by the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, the mountainous city lies in a high humidity zone, with annual average relative humidity of 70 to 80 percent. It only sees sunshine once every three or four days all year around, making it one of the areas in China with the lowest amount of sunshine annually, especially in spring and winter.

Despite this, Shen said that the suitability of a PV power generation project in Chongqing cannot be determined solely by the two indicators of sunlight hours and light intensity. Instead, such a project must be considered in combination with the price of electricity generated via PV power, PV system costs and several other factors, he said.

Founded in 2005, Shen's company was one of the first in the country to develop PV systems in low-sunshine areas. So far, it has built 1,885 PV power stations.

As a key manufacturing base in China, Chongqing has a large amount of suitable space on factory rooftops, which can be used for installing PV systems, Shen said.