PVTIME – The photovoltaic project in Kuqa, Xinjiang, was severely affected by strong winds on 27th November.
The extreme weather conditions caused nearly 100 MW of photovoltaic arrays to be blown over, and numerous photovoltaic racks and modules to collapse, with most photovoltaic modules sustaining moderate to severe damages.
The project was officially launched in November 2021. As the largest photovoltaic green hydrogen production project under construction in the world and the first 10000 tons photovoltaic green hydrogen demonstration project in China, the project attracted wide attention from the very beginning.
The total investment of the project is nearly $420 million, featuring photovoltaic power generation, power transmission and transformation, hydrogen production by electrolyzing water, hydrogen storage and hydrogen transmission. Among them, the photovoltaic power generation project is 1000MW with a total investment of $136 million in Phase I.
On 30th January this year, the first phase of the photovoltaic power generation project started the bidding for photovoltaic modules. The capacity was 361MW and the module type was required to be ultra-high power 650 Wp+ modules (the price quoted by the enterprise included the rack cost). Risen, Trina Solar, Eging PV and Chint Solar were the four finalists in the bidding process.
In September this year, the media reported that 82% of the project had been completed in the first phase.
The construction and grid connection were expected to be completed on 30th October. Reportedly, there are 92 arrays in the project. A total of 546928 pieces of 650/655 Wp monocrystalline silicon bifacial dual-glass modules are installed with fixed and adjustable racks and matched with string inverters.
The losses generated by this disaster are anticipated to hinder the project’s overall progress.
It is believed that the G12 cell was officially launched in August 2019, followed by the 66 formats of the oversized module in October 2020. The overall size of the module is 2384mm * 1303mm, the module area is 3.1 ㎡, and the weight is nearly 40kg.
When experiencing high-wind conditions, the module’s wind-blocking area is expansive.
In a headwind condition, the back of the module is subjected to extreme pressure, which can easily result in damage to the module. At the same time, the risk of resonance instability of the rack also increases.
According to the analysis of numerous industry experts, this occurrence has had a significant impact on the sluggish growth of oversized modules, and the future development prospect is concerning.
