Status and prospect of photovoltaic utilization in Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, China

With the rapid development of economy and society, energy demand of Zhangjiakou City, located in Hebei Province of China, is increasing in an high speed. In 2008, the annual accumulative total capacity of electric power is about 10.6 billion kWh, and the most of them is provided by the fossil fuel resource. Certainly, it is a very inappropriate energy structure, so the sustainable development of city is impossible in future, the status must be improved in order to achieve sustainable development. Fortunately, Zhangjiakou City has comparatively abundant solar energy resources compare with other cities of Hebei Province. Nowadays, development and application of solar energy have been regarded by the government and ordinary people. They thought that solar energy can provide more and more electric power in future, and actual examples have been applied in the recent years supported by local governments, such as solar lighting system, grid-connect photovoltaic generation, distributed generation, wind-solar hybrid system, and so on. This paper discusses the current situation of solar energy source in Zhangjiakou City, describes the utilization of photovoltaic power, and introduces the prospect of photovoltaic application in future Zhangjiakou City.