China Planning World’s Largest Solar Farm
2008 was an exciting year for solar energy, and 2009 is shaping up to be even better. Earlier this week, the China Technology Development Group Corp. and Qinghai New Energy Co. announced plans to build a 1 GW solar farm in China— the largest in the world.
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Construction will begin this year on the first part of the project— a $150 million, 30 MW crystalline silicon and thin film solar power station in the Qaidam Basin. The full timeline for the project is not currently available.
If the solar farm is completed, it will be nearly twice as large as the largest solar installation to be announced thus far. Optisolar’s planned 550 MW thin film solar plant in San Luis Obispo, CA would supply energy to Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
Photo Credit: NREL
It seems like a handful of countries have entered into an unspoken competition to have the largest alternate energy production ‘farms’.
It’s a good thing, I suppose.
Let’s just hope that they are serious about expanding their solar program, as China needs to back off the building of so many coal-fired plants that have become so detrimental to the air quality.
I am actually concerned about adopting solar too fast with mega-projects like this. If China makes sudden huge orders along with all the other orders, there isn’t enough supply. Prices on solar panels will suddenly skyrocket, building plans will stall until supply catches up. Its probably unavoidable, though.