In today’s “Mega China”, I traveled to the world’s largest solar farm. And it is in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

In the past decade, power generation has almost doubled in China. Coal fire power still remains the main energy source. But green energy has been gradually replacing China’s reliance on coal. Located at the Dalad Banner in Inner Mongolia, the “Lead from the Front” solar farm sits in the Kubuqi Desert – the seventh largest in the country.

Solar panels there are just like sun flowers! They follow the sun – tilt and pan – and move as the sun moves.

It was my first time visiting a solar farm in a desert. I was baked and roasted but that’s part of the charm, I guess.

I met Yu Haowei there. Yu is the vice manager for the New Energy and Atmospheric Environmental Protection Division at the China Construction Eco-Environmental Protection Technology Company.

He told me that the first thing they did to build the solar farm was to level the ground and the slope could not be more than 15 degrees.

“Another thing is that when we installed the foundation for solar panels, we realized the sand was relatively fine. So, when we dug holes for the foundation, it easily collapsed downward. And that’s because, the depth of the holes did not meet the requirements. We then realized that we can inject water into the hole, to make the sand effectively fixed,” Yu further explained how they installed the solar panels on sand.

The solar farm project at the Dalad Banner is the world’s largest solar farm in a desert.

And the Kubuqi Desert has an annual sunshine duration of over 3,000 hours – twice more than Chinese coastal cities, and three times more than the country’s southwest.

When the sunlight hits a solar panel, the energy is absorbed by solar cells. The process creates electrical charges. Scientists believe one and a half hour of sun exposure on the Earth’s surface can provide a whole year of electricity supply for mankind. The conversion, however, has been limited. To harvest more energy from the sun and turn it into electricity is the key.

Solar trackers installed in the farm help keep solar panels in a position that they always face the sun therefore increasing solar cell efficiency to over 20 percent – that’s 10 percentage points more than a decade ago.

The electricity generated here is then transferred to China’s ultra-voltage national grid – lighting up rooms across China – including the capital Beijing which is 650 kilometers away.

In addition to generating clean energy, the solar farm is also playing an important role in controlling desertification.

“We use the solar panels to generate power and under them we grow plants to control desertification.” As Fan Baoquan explained to me.

Fan runs one section of the farm developed by China General Nuclear – a global leader in renewable energy.

“This is a long-term plan. It was a plan co-developed by the Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, the local government and our company. The overall plan is to plant some medicinal herbs, jujubes and some other plants with relatively high protein that are suitable for local growth, like forage plants,” Fan added.

Construction of this solar farm started in 2018 and since then, over 3 million solar panels have been installed with future expansion plans of reaching an annual electricity generation of 4 billion kilowatt-hours – that will easily meet the demand of some 2 million households per year.

China is already the largest producer of solar energy in the world and also the biggest hub for producing solar panels. Now, clean energy accounts for more than 60 percent of the increase in energy consumption in China.

The transitions are made to reach the country’s target of peaking carbon emission by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2060, an ambitious move by China to continue its green drive. Source: CGTN