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China Power

World's Largest Solar Farm Goes Online In China 87

Posted by BeauHD from the flip-the-switch dept.
Michelle Lewis reports via Electrek: The world's largest solar farm, in the desert in northwestern Xinjiang, is now connected to China's grid. The 3.5-gigawatt (GW), 33,000-acre solar farm is outside Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. The state asset regulator's website cited the Power Construction Corp of China and said it came online on Monday. The solar farm will generate about 6.09 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity annually. Assuming an EV consumes about 3,000 kWh per year, 6.09 billion kWh could power 2.03 million EVs annually.

The world's largest solar farm in Xinjiang is part of China's megabase project, a plan to install 455 GW of wind and solar. The megabase projects are sited in sparsely populated, resource-rich areas and send their generated energy to major urban centers, such as on China's eastern seaboard. China now boasts the three largest solar farms in the world by capacity. The Ningxia Tenggeli and Golmud Wutumeiren solar farms, each with a capacity of 3 MW, are already online.
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World's Largest Solar Farm Goes Online In China More

World's Largest Solar Farm Goes Online In China

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  • Ah yes I remember hearing America could be powered (Score:5, Insightful)

    by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Friday June 07, 2024 @08:51PM (#64532123) Homepage Journal

    Ah yes I remember hearing America could be powered by a few solar farms in the deserts. But certain people demanded that idea be shoved where the sun don't shine. Now we get to watch China beating US at solar (and perhaps a few other things too).

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A single reactor produces more energy, comfortably sits on a thousandth of the area, and lasts the better part of a century. China is winning because they are building many reactors and developing much more efficient ones, based on the MSR technology we gifted to them. Their resource efficiency can be expected to grow by orders of magnitude, and will also be used to produce cheap synthetic fuels and such.

      Winning does not look like replacing each of our hundred or so reactors with >100,000 acres of solar

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by sosume ( 680416 )

        telling the inconvenient truth gets you downvoted here, too.

        • We should be able to have a reasoned discussion on electricity generation, consumption, the grid, in general.

          It should be able to be discussed without knee-jerk reactions, blocking by people who by ferver/job/politics have only one solution and one 'noble' way to do this.

          Make a business, economic, social, strategic and environmental case for each of the options, then let's have a reasoned discussion.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        So you’ve named three purported benefits of nuclear vs solar:
        1. Produces more energy per plant
        2. Uses less land
        3. Lasts longer
        If these were the only criteria that mattered, then perhaps nuclear would be self-evidently better. But obviously, they’re not. There are many other factors that matter, including, but not limited to: costs (capex and opex), speed of construction, payback period, carbon intensity, dispatchability, decommissioning, waste management, security, reliability, intermittency, vu

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Two of them are misleading anyway.

          "Uses less land" ignores the type of land required. Nuclear needs geologically stable land, close to a source of water for cooling, but away from large population centres in case of an accident. It also needs mines to supply fuel, and more mines to store spent fuel for extremely long periods of time, again in geologically stable areas.

          "Lasts longer" is debatable. Solar panels appear to have a lifetime similar to the design lifetime of nuclear plants, but crucially they are

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            OTOH, recycling obsolescent solar panels is almost not even considered...and it should be.

          • Solar land needs are infinitely more painful to meet. Because of the climate they need to operate in- Sunny, regularly sunny... and low risk of hail or anything else that can drop on the panels reducing efficiency (dust, snow) or causing damage (hail)

            Solar needs batteries

            Solar also needs numerous massive mines for the resources used to construct them.

            Nuclear seems to be the clear winner in terms of design lifetime, as most solar panels even with stated hypothetical lifetimes are loosing efficiency and burni

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              You know they put solar on roofs in places with lots of rain and hail and snow and strong winds, right?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by shilly ( 142940 )

                It’s a conflation of two different meanings of the word “need”. Nuclear plants “need”, ie absolutely must have, land that’s geologically stable, with a water source for cooling etc. Solar “needs”, ie works best, with land that’s got high insolation and few things dropping on it. But *it still works* even if the land isn’t great in one way or another, as you pointed out. Whereas nuclear doesn’t work if the land isn’t good enough.

      • Solar has the advantage of being sorta portable. You don't need huge installations of panels. Think of how much area is available on rooftops. Including panels on top of every roof that presents to the sun correctly would supply a substantial chunk of power to the grid. Producing locally would also have the benefit of reducing the loss trough transmission. This would not produce all of the power needed. There would always be a need for power plants of one kind or another.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          OTOH, rooftop solar has the advantage that any energy converted to electricity won't inadvertently heat the house. But it has the disadvantage that installing or maintaining it is a bit dangerous.

          Perhaps it could be installed as a "cooling shade" roof over highways through the deserts. This would allow easy access for any needed maintenance, and the land is already state property.

      • A single reactor [...] comfortably sits on a thousandth of the area

        We're talking about a solar installation that's about 7 miles on a side. About 51.6 square miles.

        The continental USA contains the Great Basin desert, about 200,000 square miles. The Mojave, about 54,000 square miles. The Sonoran, 100,000 square miles. The Chihuahuan, about 200,000 square miles. Plus some smaller deserts.

        I'm pretty sure we could find 50 square miles or so suitable for a solar installation. Or, you know, several. Which could b

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          You left out maintenance. Both require maintenance, but nuclear requires a lot more.

          There are always trade-offs though. Nuclear is better at providing a stable amount of power over a long period of time. Solar tends to fluctuate. (And not just on an daytime/nighttime basis.)

      • Except the solar plant can be built much faster as a reactor can, and does have zero safetyproblems. So until those reactors are all build the solar plant is delivering a lot of needed energy. But you're certainly right about the real estate it requires to deliver the power, a reactor is much more convenient. But it is very nice to have an alternative in the meantime.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      But certain people demanded that idea be shoved where the sun don't shine.

      People who think it's counterproductive to chop down Joshua trees to clear space for solar. [latimes.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Didn't the US just put a huge tariff on Chinese solar panels? It seems that even the supposedly "green" party currently in charge doesn't want solar green energy to happen.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Jeremi ( 14640 )

        Didn't the US just put a huge tariff on Chinese solar panels? It seems that even the supposedly "green" party currently in charge doesn't want solar green energy to happen.

        What they don't want is for China to drive all the US manufacturers out of business, get a monopoly on the solar-panel market, and then use that monopoly against us.

        • Are there any US solar panel manufacturers left who don't just assemble them in the US, and import the cells ?

        • But that is exactly what is happening, lolz.

        • What they don't want is for China to drive all the US manufacturers out of business, get a monopoly on the solar-panel market, and then use that monopoly against us.

          That's what people were predicting twenty years ago.

          Two decades later, China still isn't "using it against us" and their panels are cheaper than ever.

          Biden chose protectionism over climate.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          China will drive US manufacturing out of business if it ends up being powered by renewables and solar. There is demand for low carbon products, and taxes on carbon emissions which include those from overseas manufacturing.

          If the US doesn't clean up then it will give China another way to out-compete it. Same goes for Europe and everywhere else.

          If you want to compete, the only option is to mass produce low cost solar panels yourself.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            OTOH, China is also building new coal powered plants.

            I don't think I'd ever trust the bookkeeping on carbon emissions from China...not that I trust those from people buying "carbon offsets".

        • You mean exactly what the US now seems to be doing with CPU/GPU's, while most of the technology isn't even invented by americans but by people from asia or europe, some US companies just paid for it. Just like Microsoft is now trying to get chinese working in their chinese AI laboratories to move to outside of china so they can 'steal' those professionals from China.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. China can do. The US is looking more and more like a has-been clinging to past glory.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Well, compared to the days immediately following WWII, the US *is* a has-been. We're no longer competing against economies that have just been through a highly destructive war. And we've let our manufacturing sector slide into near oblivion.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          True. A leader position only matters if you keep it. Telling yourself how great you are does not accomplish that.

  • 3.5 GW is not even enough to power 3 Doloreans...
  • How's Chinas ignoring human rights, not having standards, stealing intellectual property nonstop and other things going? I'll stick to freedom thanks.
    • I will stick with freedom with responsibility. The responsibility in the current era includes not shoving a steaming pile of shit on the next generation with an overweight, over-consuming, car-centric culture that is busily eroding our own rights with the help of large multi-national companies. I think self-installing solar panels on our own houses is a great way to start.

    • I suggest you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
      More than likely, you're looking in the mirror, thinking you're seeing China and you're actually looking at yourself.

      Frankly, you should be thankful China is making so much progress moving away from fossil fuels. The whole planet benefits.

      • How much of that progress to moving away from fossil fuels is from hydro and nuclear fission? It appears to me that it is quite a bit but that doesn't make the same kind of news for some reason. There's a lot of mainstream news from China on their successes to build out solar power but not so much on hydro and nuclear. If China is doing so well on moving away from fossil fuels then we need to see the entire picture.

      • Does have a point. The meme "Slavery; it gets shit done" is why sometimes autocratic regimes are so productive. When the 'state' decides it's doing something, very very little gets in their way.

        Now, if they choose the direction they go poorly, it goes bad pretty catastrophically.

        But for now, China can build a high speed rail network without the eminent domain cost that prevents us from doing it. They don't have GWBush come in and kill green investments. They can decree solar everywhere and it

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by MacMann ( 7518492 )

      How's China's efforts in nuclear power going? Or Russia's for that matter?
      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]

      If we are going to use China as the example to follow on energy then we need to have the whole picture. China is building nuclear power plants in addition to their efforts on energy from wind, water, and sun. Russia is growing their nuclear power capacity also. For both nations the interest is in avoiding energy imports.

      For the USA to have a similar kind of energy independence there would have to b

      • The *only* place in the *world* to get the quality of quartz required for the semiconductor manufacturing crucibles that refine silicon is in NC. We can fight back just as easily.

    • Re:China? No thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by v1 ( 525388 ) on Friday June 07, 2024 @10:44PM (#64532301) Homepage Journal

      stealing intellectual property nonstop

      They're on the far left of that spectrum. And us here in the USA are on the far right, with our patent trolls and $450 bottles of insulin that cost them $2 to manufacture, on a process the inventor refused to patent because he knew it was life-saving and should be a basic human right.

      Personally I'd prefer to be on the far left rather than the far right. At least people aren't royally extorted just for the privilege of staying alive. The only ones vilifying China's ignoring patents are the ones like those setting the prices of insulin. Is that really who you want to be listening to when coming to an opinion on copyright?

  • I've always wondered where solar panels were grown. :-)

  • "each with a capacity of 3 MW" – well, no. 3 GW.

    • "each with a capacity of 3 MW" – well, no. 3 GW.

      Yeah, that article is fucking shit. Was it written by an AI? Either that or the human author was deliberately being misleading with their awful mashup of different units.

  • China has about 330 million cars in service as of 2023. Indicator of scale of problem, perhaps?

  • This will help them with their electricity needs and hopefully make them less dependent on coal power plants.

  • Two stories above this is an argument that we (the US) don't need to reduce our carbon emissions because China isn't doing anything

  • The plant will produce that amount of energy in a single day. Not in a year.

  • power sent 3000 KM (Score:3)

    by oumuamua ( 6173784 ) on Saturday June 08, 2024 @08:50AM (#64533065)
    It is in the summary but is worth highlighting HOW they are sending the power: China’s State Grid Corp Crushes Power Transmission Records

    The new 1100-kv UHVDC line absorbs the grid’s alternating current at an AC/DC converter station near the capitol of Xinjiang—China's vast northwestern territory—and sends DC power to a second converter station in Anhui province in eastern China. That 3,293 kilometer run extends power transmission’s distance record by over 900 kms.

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/chin... [ieee.org]
    Why is China Dominating Ultra High Voltage DC https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • As of July 2023, China had more coal-fired power plants than any other country in the world, with 1,142 operational plants on the Chinese mainland. This is more than four times the number of plants in India, which is second. In 2023, China was responsible for 95% of new coal power construction, with 47.4 GW of capacity coming online and 70.2 GW of new construction starting. This was nearly quadruple the amount of new construction that began in 2019. https://www.carbonbrief.org/ch... [carbonbrief.org]

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