Sprawling solar and wind farms provide power for local development projects
A car drives alongside solar panels at the power plant. (WANG ZHUANGFEI / CHINA DAILY)
With China racing to curb its reliance on fossil fuels, a valuable addition to the nation's renewable energy mix lies on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert, the largest arid area in the country.
Endless arrays of solar panels sprawl across a sun-scorched wasteland of rubble and fine dust in Lop county, an oasis town in a southern area of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
They are set at a fixed angle of 37 degrees, which electrical engineers believe allows the optimum capture of sunlight.
Towers carrying ultra-high-voltage transmission cables loom in the distance at this 6,600-hectare photovoltaic industrial park.
In February, a solar power project with an installed capacity of 200 megawatts was completed at the park and connected to the power grid.
Cao Longjing, a project manager for State Power Investment Corp, or SPIC, who is overseeing construction of the 200-MW project, stood beside one of the solar panels squinting in the sunlight and dust, his face tanned by long exposure to the elements.
He said Lop enjoys thousands of hours of very strong sunshine a year, enabling the plant to produce more than 320 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually.
Last year, China's per capita annual power consumption was 947 kWh, National Energy Administration data show. Output from the industrial park meets the energy needs of 338,000 people a year. The park, although sizable compared with other renewable energy projects in China, which leads the world in solar power output, is dwarfed by most of its coal-powered or hydroelectric counterparts.
Despite this, Cao said such projects point the way to the future.
The service time for such infrastructure can be more than 20 years, with extremely low maintenance costs. In addition, the park is built on wasteland, and transforming the abundant sunlight into usable energy.
"Erecting solar panels in the desert can even curb sandstorms," Cao said.
Engineers patrol the photovoltaic power plant in Hotan, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, on May 17. (WANG ZHUANGFEI / CHINA DAILY)
Carbon footprint
Tian Juxiong, who works for SPIC, told a group of visitors how the project helps reduce the nation's carbon footprint.
He said it curbs coal consumption by 110,000 metric tons annually, and reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide by 330,000 tons and 1,300 tons, respectively, every year.
"A tree can absorb 18 kilograms of carbon dioxide, and therefore this project is equivalent to planting 17 million trees a year," Tian said.
He added that construction of an additional 400-MW project is expected to be completed as soon as the end of the year.
The expansion of the solar energy supply comes as China has pledged to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060.
To achieve these goals, the central government has introduced rules to reduce emissions produced by heavy industry, such as steel and cement manufacture, and to phase out vehicles that run on fossil fuels.
It has also promoted the use of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, and invested heavily in infrastructure and technology.
China is now the world's largest producer of wind and solar energy.
"These newly approved solar projects are mostly measured by gigawatts (an electrical unit that is 1,000 times the megawatt)," Cao said:
China's largest photovoltaic power plant, which is one of the biggest in the world, is situated on 600 square kilometers of land in Qinghai province, with an installed capacity of some 16 GW.
Workers perform safety checks on equipment at the plant. (WANG ZHUANGFEI / CHINA DAILY)
Space saved
Solar power plants typically require more space than those powered by coal, due to the way the panels are set up.
To save space in densely populated regions, these devices are usually installed on rooftops. They are also floated in reservoirs. Creating such facilities on arable land can be extremely costly, not only because of the higher land price, but also as a result of annual compensation payments for crops that otherwise would have been grown and harvested.
The Hotan region, which comprises several large counties including Lop, is better known for its jade, silk and carpets, but it is also home to vast areas of the Gobi Desert, and thus much cheaper land. It enjoys about an average of 15 hours of sunlight a day.
These factors, together with newly built long-distance transmission cables that connect large areas of Hotan with China's eastern provinces, are attracting large numbers of solar power investors.
The previous lack of transmission infrastructure forced many renewable energy projects to remain dormant for part of the year, which lasted till 2016.
Tian said his company was attracted by the long hours of sunlight in Hotan, and started to expand its solar footprint in the region in 2011. Currently, the company's plants in Hotan have a total installed capacity of 890 MW.
The conversion efficiency of solar panels averages 18 percent across the industry. To boost output and curb land use, SPIC has invested in making such devices more efficient — by almost 25 percent in laboratory settings. "However, the sandstorms and dust in Lop adversely affect the performance of the solar panels," Tian said.
Workers at the plant said they use sprinklers once or twice a month to wash the panels. SPIC is also in talks with a robotics company to provide facilities with automatic cleaners.
"At this stage, using robotics is still much more expensive than manual labor, but we decided to go ahead with the plan, as it is the trend," Tian said.
The additional clean energy supply is expected to help the local mining industry go green. The beneficiaries include an energy-intensive nonferrous metal industrial park just a few kilometers away.
A worker checks the status of equipment at the power plant. (WANG ZHUANGFEI / CHINA DAILY)
Raw materials
The park, which is still under construction, hosts a factory that produces lithium salts, a crucial raw material for making batteries for use at solar farms.
Lop is part of Xinjiang's plan to build itself into a renewable energy base with sprawling solar and wind farms to power local development projects and provide clean energy to industrial clusters in coastal regions.
The regional government aims for Xinjiang to transmit 180 billion kW of electricity outside the region from 2021 to 2025.
Officials said the installed capacity of renewable energy projects in the region will reach 82,400 MW by 2025.
"SPIC has settled in Hotan as part of efforts to fulfill its obligations as a State-owned enterprise," Tian said.
