World's biggest solar farm

 World's biggest solar farm comes online in China, big enough to power a country

A Chinese state-owned company said on Monday it had connected the world's biggest solar plant to the grid in north western Xinjiang. The 5-gigawatt (GW), 200,000-acre solar farm, in a desert area of the capital Urumqi, came online on Monday, a notice on the state asset regulator's website said, citing the Power Construction Corp of China. The facility will generate about 6.09 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity each year. That would be enough to power the country of Papua New Guinea for a year.

The two largest operational solar facilities previously were also in western China - Longyuan Power Group's Ningxia Tenggeli desert solar project and China Lüfa Qinghai New Energy's Golmud Wutumeiren solar complex, both with a capacity of 3GW, according to the Global Energy Monitor's solar power tracker. The world’s biggest solar plant is capable of powering a small country with its annual capacity of more than 6 billion kilowatt hours. China turns on 'world record' solar farm big enough to power Luxembourg. 5GW facility is roughly the same area as New York City. The facility in a desert region of the north-west province of Xinjiang covers 200,000 acres.

China has led the world in solar power adoption, boosting its capacity in 2023 by more than 50 per cent. The new solar farm overtakes the Ningxia Teneggeli and Golmud Wutumeiren solar projects to become the largest in the world. A recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) described China’s drive towards renewables as “extraordinary”, with the country commissioning as much solar capacity last year as the entire world did in 2022. “China accounts for almost 60 per cent of new renewable capacity expected to become operational globally by 2028,” the report stated.

Xinjiang is sparsely populated but has bountiful wind and solar resource. This has led to huge renewables projects being developed there, with power pumped around China, including to its highly populated eastern coast. Xinjiang has become a hub for massive renewable energy bases that send much of their power across long distances to China's densely populated eastern seaboard. “China’s role is critical in reaching the global goal of tripling renewables because the country is expected to install more than half of the new capacity required globally by 2030. At the end of the forecast period, almost half of China’s electricity generation will come from renewable energy sources.”

Elon Musk is seemingly impressed by the size of the Chinese project. “Wow,” was the reaction of Tesla owner Elon Musk to the news on X, formerly known as Twitter. The facility will reportedly generate about 6.09 terawatt hours of electricity each year. That is nearly enough to meet the entire electricity demand of Luxembourg – a country of around 650,000 people – which used 6.6 terawatt hours of electricity in 2022. 

Analysis from leading manufacturer Longi Green Energy Technology in 2023 estimated that fitting solar panels to rooftops and buildings in China would produce enough electricity to power all the households in China and South-East Asia combined. The massive ramp-up in production of solar panels in China has led to recent concerns that overcapacity could lead to trade tensions resulting from a global market glut. Last month, in an effort to prevent this, US President Joe Biden announced that tariffs on Chinese solar cell imports would double from 25 per cent to 50 per cent. China is leading the global energy transition, with the International Energy Agency reporting that its “extraordinary” green growth is helping to keep the global target of tripling renewables capacity by 2030 within reach.