China has officially activated the world’s largest solar farm in the desert region near Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
The Power Construction Corporation of China, a state-owned enterprise, announced Monday via a notice on the state asset regulator’s website that it has successfully connected a 5-gigawatt (GW) solar facility covering 200,000 acres to the grid.
The solar farm is set to produce approximately 6.09 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity annually, sufficient to meet the energy needs of a country the size of Papua New Guinea for one year. This monumental project surpasses the capacity of the previous record holders: Longyuan Power Group’s Ningxia Tenggeli desert solar project and China Lüfa Qinghai New Energy’s Golmud Wutumeiren solar complex, each with a capacity of 3GW.
Xinjiang, known for its vast solar and wind resources, is crucial in China’s renewable energy strategy. The region’s extensive renewable energy installations primarily supply power to the heavily populated areas of China’s eastern coast.
