A new solar power plant in Xinjiang, China, has a total capacity of 6.09 billion kWh, enough to supply a country like Papua New Guinea for an entire year.
Solar panels in the deserts of China. (Photo: China News).
China has connected the world’s largest solar power plant to the grid in the northwest region of Xinjiang. The plant spans an area of 80,937 hectares and has an annual output of 6.09 billion kWh, according to Interesting Engineering. The new facility is located in the desert near the capital city of Ürümqi in Xinjiang. It began operations on June 3 and is operated by the China Power Construction Group. The designed capacity of the plant is sufficient to provide electricity for the entire population of Papua New Guinea for a whole year.
Xinjiang, located in the northwest of China, serves as a crossroads between Central Asia and East Asia. This autonomous region covers more than 397 million hectares and has a population of approximately 25 million. Xinjiang shares borders with Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and India. Although sparsely populated, Xinjiang is abundant in wind and solar energy resources. This makes Xinjiang an ideal region for large-scale renewable energy facilities, transmitting much of the electricity over long distances to densely populated coastal areas in the east.
With a population of about 4 million as of 2020, Ürümqi is the second-largest city in northwest China, after Xi’an, and the largest city in Central Asia by population. Since the 1990s, Ürümqi has experienced significant economic growth and now serves as a hub for transportation, culture, politics, and commerce in the region.
The new power plant is the latest development project in the area, reinforcing China’s position in solar power generation. Data published by the National Energy Administration of China last year showed that the country’s solar power generation capacity increased by 55.2% in 2023. According to Global Energy Monitor, the two largest operational solar power plants before this were located in western China. These include the Ningxia Tenggeli Desert Solar Power Project by Longyuan Power Group and the Golmud Wutumeiren Solar Power Complex by China Lüfa Qinghai New Energy, both of which have a capacity of 3 GW.
