The Asian Correspondent
Kyle Lawrence Mullin
August 11, 2015
The Delingha solar thermal power plant is already under construction. Image via news.com.cn.
China’s smog may be infamous, but its Gobi desert is quickly becoming known for soaking up solar rays that could make blue skies the new norm.
Last weekend an article on Discovery’s website described an ambitious, 10-square-mile solar thermal power plant being built in the Gobi desert in the northwestern province of Qinghai. Dubbed Delingha, the facility is expected to provide power to one million households and is set to go online in 2017.
The Discovery article also touched on the broader proliferation of solar facilities in the region. It cited National Geographic’s recent publishing of NASA satellite photos to show how photovoltaic panels have sprawled across the Gobi as of late, covering triple the desert’s land mass compared to three years ago.
These images from NASA (via National Geographic) show the massive growth of solar in China in just three years.
But apparently Delingha will up the region’s already impressive power production. According to the The Inquisitor, it is on track to be the biggest solar power plant in the world, measuring as large as many of the cities that it will provide green energy to. Discovery noted that Delingha will be a solar thermal project. That’s an important distinction— according to solar-thermal.com solar thermal facilities capture sunlight to heat liquids that can easily be stored to later run electricity generating engines. This is more practical than using mere photovoltaic solar panel technology that directly converts sunlight to electricity, which can not be stored for later use as easily as a thermal system’s heated liquids.
Wu Longyi, the board chair of the Qinghai Solar-Thermal Power Group that is heading up Delingha, told Chinese state media outlet Xinhua that “designed heat storage is 15 hours, thus, it can guarantee stable, continual power generation.” However, China has by no means abandoned photovoltaic technology — in fact, a recent Takepart article says China has become the world’s biggest developer of those PV panels.
The ambitiously gargantuan Delingha facility is part of President Xi Jinping’s lofty goal to slash 20 percent of the country’s fossil fuel usage by 2030. An Aug. 8 article in The Independent said the recent rampant growth of such sun soaking power facilities shows that China is “quickly becoming a world leader in solar power.” The story also cited studies by the International Energy Agency and the UN Environment program that detailed, respectively, how the PRC attained the globe’s highest level of solar capacity last year and how it became the world’s top renewable energy investor, devoting $83.3 billion to green power in 2014 alone.
But not all environmental experts have been dazzled by China’s solar initiatives. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported on subpar technical standards in 23 percent of sampled PRC’s panels. Worse still, an alarming curtailment issue has wasted 28 percent of solar electricity in Gansu and 19 percent in Xinjiang, according to a more recent Green Tech Media article. The story went on to quote Adam James, an electricity grid expert and senior analyst at GTM Research, who said that China’s laudable gains in solar plant construction will be hampered until its power infrastructure is up to par. He added: “Despite solar receiving strong incentive support and installations reaching record-setting highs, the Chinese electricity market is still grappling with serious structural challenges.”
