The world’s biggest combined solar power station and salt farm has been plugged into the grid in China, with a capacity to meet the electricity needs of 1½ million households, according to its operator.
State-owned China Huadian Corporation said the Huadian Tianjin Haijing power station, was connected to the grid in the northern municipality of Tianjin on Saturday. Solar Lighting
The station comprises a vast array of solar panels erected over more than 13 square kilometres of the Changlu salt fields, one of the country’s oldest coastal salt farms.
The “salt-light complementary” system generates both electricity and salt, using double-sided solar panels that absorb direct sunlight from above as well as sunlight reflected from the water below.
China Huadian said the station had an installed capacity of 1 gigawatt and would generate 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year.
The green electricity produced would help reduce carbon emissions without affecting the environment of the salt fields, according to the company.
State broadcaster CCTV said the panels were spaced farther apart than other plants to optimise energy and salt production and tilted at a specific angle to minimise shading of the water surface.
The salt fields are also used to breed shrimp, an aquaculture business that will continue in conjunction with the solar project.
The project’s chief, Yang Fan, told CCTV that the facility was a “new composite industrial model of floating photovoltaic power generation, brine evaporation, and aquaculture”.
State news agency Xinhua said the annual yield of a shrimp farm in the city of Binzhou, Shandong province, increased after a solar project was built on top of the farm.
According to the report, production increased because the panels shaded the shrimp ponds, lowering the water temperature between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius.
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China Huadian chairman Jiang Yi said the project increased the company’s installed capacity to over 200GW.
Jiang said the company was operating other “gigawatt projects”, including a solar hydrogen plant designed to produce 600 cubic metres of hydrogen per hour.
The National Energy Administration aims to have 490GW of installed solar power capacity throughout the country by the end of the year.
Wind Solar Street Light According to the China Electricity Council, there was 430GW of such capacity up and running by March.