China Price Cost and Certification Center Probes Concentrated Solar Power in Qinghai

The involvement of the Price Cost and Certification Center matters because it is the body that shapes how costs are recognized and certified, which in turn feeds into tariff and pricing decisions for CSP projects. A week-long field study across three prefectures, with site inspections of plants run by China Three Gorges, CHN Energy, CGN New Energy, PowerChina New Energy, Zhejiang Cosin and Qinghai Zhongkong Solar, suggests the center is building a cost baseline for a technology that has struggled to compete on price with solar PV. Whether that leads to differentiated pricing treatment for CSP's storage and dispatchability is the open question.