Chinese state-owned company Power Construction Corp of China proudly announced the successful connection of the “world’s biggest solar plant” to the electrical grid in northwestern Xinjiang on Monday, Reuters reports, citing a notice on the state asset regulator’s website.
China’s record-breaking solar farm powers up
According to the report, the new solar farm officially came online on June 3, 2024. It sits on 200,000 acres of land in a desert area outside the capital, Urumqi.
The Xinjiang solar farm highlights China’s strong lead in the global green energy industry and commitment to sustainability.
In fact, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) recent report hailed China’s renewable energy push as “extraordinary.” The country commissioned as much solar capacity in 2023 as the entire world did in 2022, Independent reports.
Energy generating capacity
The solar farm is expected to yield an annual energy capacity of approximately 6.09 billion kilowatt hours (kWh).
This capacity is reportedly sufficient to provide power to an entire small country like Papua New Guinea for a year.
A typical electric vehicle consumes an estimated energy of approximately 3,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) annually. Therefore, the 6.09 billion kWh output could power a whopping 2.03 million EVs per year.
It demonstrates the potential of solar farms to substantially contribute to powering a large fleet of EVs every year, potentially paving the way for a cleaner transportation future.
A significant step in China’s renewable energy push
It is worth noting that the Xinjiang solar farm is under China’s megabase project, which seeks to develop 455 GW of wind and solar capacities. These projects are reportedly deployed in densely populated, resource-rich locations to power major urban centers like on the eastern seaboard.
The world’s previous largest operational solar farms also rose in western China – Longyuan Power Group’s Ningxia Tenggeli desert solar project and China Lüfa Qinghai New Energy’s Golmud Wutumeiren solar complex. These facilities both generate an energy capacity of 3GW, per the Global Energy Monitor’s solar power tracker.
With the launch of the Xinjiang solar farm, China now has the world’s three largest solar farms by capacity.
Indeed, Xinjiang has advanced as a hub for tremendous renewable energy facilities providing energy across long distances to the country’s populated eastern seaboard owing to its abundant solar and wind resources. It is also currently leading in polysilicon manufacturing, a key raw material in solar panel production.
