State-owned power company China Three Gorges Renewables Group will build an 8 GW solar farm as part of a nearly $11 billion integrated energy project.
To put the sheer size of the 8 GW solar farm in perspective, the three largest solar farms in the world by capacity are China’s Ningxia Tenggeli and Golmud Wutumeiren solar farms, with a capacity of 3 MW each, and a 3.5-GW solar farm outside Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. In addition to the massive solar farm, the $10.99 billion project will also consist of 4 GW of wind, 5 GWh of energy storage capacity, 200 MW of solar thermal, and (disappointingly) 4 GW of coal-fired power. It will be sited in Ordos, in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, the Shanghai-listed company said in a stock filing.
China Three Gorges says that the enormous integrated energy site’s power will be dispatched to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster in northern China via an ultra-high voltage power transmission line.
The project will break ground in September and is expected to come online by June 2027.
China Three Gorges Renewables will take a 56% stake, and Inner Mongolia Energy Group will control 44%.
This ambitious project is a significant step in China’s ongoing efforts to transition to cleaner energy sources while still accommodating its growing energy demands. The combination of solar, wind, and energy storage signifies a robust approach to integrating renewable energy into the grid, although the inclusion of coal-fired power indicates the challenges still faced in fully abandoning fossil fuels.
Dave Jones, insight director at London-based renewables thinktank Ember, commented on the broader context of global electricity demand and renewable energy integration: *“We’re heading fast toward an electric future, with so much of the rise in energy demand coming from electricity. Renewable electricity has a dual role – not only to replace coal and gas power plants – but also to meet this rise in electricity demand. Therefore, we need to be building renewables at double speed, to make power sector emissions fall as fast as they need to.”*
For more details, visit https://electrek.co/2024/07/18/electricity-demand-growth-at-its-highest-in-two-decades-and-solar-will-meet-half-the-increase/
