PVTIME – Recently, Hubei Engineering Company, a subsidiary of POWERCHINA, won the EPC contract of the second bid section of the 2GW Kubuqi desert PV project in West Inner Mongolia Base, Hangjin Banner, Ordos City, Inner Mongolia. The project is one of the largest solar plants that aim at restoring the ecology of Inner Mongolia’s Kubuqi Desert.
POWERCHINA won the bid section including booster energy storage station, comprehensive management and operation display center, desert control and ecological restoration projects in the hinterland of the desert, where the ecological environment is extremely fragile, suffering with severe desertification and soil erosion, yet is gifted with abundant sunshine which is estimated to be more than 3180 hours annually.
This project will not only be desert control, but also an important step for achieving carbon neutrality. The giant PV plant is useful for absorbing sun light, deceasing the land temperature, reducing moisture evaporation from soil, which means to use the solar resource and gradually alter the desert into oasis. Photovoltaic panels can generate electricity as well as windproof, crops can be planted under the panels, and farming can be done between the panels. Then 100,000 mu of desert will be to be restored, the poor ecological environment will be changed.
What is more, the solar plant is planned to be connected to a storage facility with a capacity of 300 MW/600 MWh. Once upon completion, the average annual supply of electricity from the solar plant will be about 4 billion kWh, saving 1.25 million MT of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 3.41 million MT.
