Tuesday, June 4, 2024

"China opens world’s biggest solar farm with 6.09 billion kWh annual capacity"

From Interesting Engineering, June 4:

The plant has a total capacity of 6.09 billion kWh, which is enough to a small country for an entire year.

China has just connected what it believes to be the world’s biggest solar power plant to the grid in northwestern Xinjiang. The plant covers an area of 200,000 acres and is reported to have an output of 6.09 billion kWh annually.

The new plant is in the deserts near the region’s capital Ürümqi. The site came online this Monday (June 3) and is being run by the Chinese state-owned Power Construction Corporation, according to Reuters.

To put its enormous output into perspective, its designed output would provide enough power for the entire population of Papua New Guinea for an entire year. It is also more-or-less enough to power Luxembourg for a year too. The new solar farm has impressed even Elon Musk.

Xinjiang is sparsely populated and abundant in solar and wind resources. This makes it an ideal site for massive renewable energy bases that transmit most of their power over long distances to China’s densely populated eastern seaboard....

....MUCH MORE

The Reuters story pegs the nameplate capacity of the plant at 5 gigawatts, about equal to five average nuclear power plants, again, that's nameplate.