At 250 miles long, 3 miles wide, and currently generating 5.4 gigawatts, the Kubuqi Desert solar array will be the world’s largest by a country mile when finished in 2030.
Sure it will. Wake me up when it’s built and operational. Sounds a lot like that imaginary straight line city that Saudi Araby talks about building.
What did they call these things 15 years ago? Vaporware?
Except China actually completes these things. They installed more solar in 2023 than all other countries installed new power of all types combined.
They have more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined. They have more wind power than the rest of the world combined.
Oh, and they have more high and low speed rail than the rest of the world combined, and most of that was built in the last twenty years.
Unfortunately they’re also producing and burning the most coal. Hopefully they can stop that really soon.
…ye gads, just imagine the heat island generated by 750 square miles of black glass: that’s a weather-creating convective air mass…
What are the major challenges to operating solar panels in hot deserts? Does efficiency drop if the panels get too hot?
…i’ve only done urban installations, but recently i’ve been giving a lot of thought to the localised effect of high-albedo reflective roofs (and other materials) and transpirative tree canopies (and other vegetation) being replaced by low-albedo solar photovoltaic arrays: it measurably increases heat load on the local environment, reduces radiative cooling at night, and drives up overall cooling demand, which presents a deep rabbit-hole of cost-benefit analyses in the tradeoff between reduced grid use during the day versus increased grid use at night, the potential net reduction in carbon emissions therefrom, the added carbon emissions from manufacturing and maintaining solar photovoltaic infrastructure, and the loss of ecosystem carbon capture and biodiversity services from decreased solar exposure and increased heat island effect…
…it’s a poorly-understood subject of ongoing academic study in both urban and natural environments, with the largest arrays i’ve read subjected to that sort of rigorous analysis measuring on the order of 1/300,000 the scale of this proposed project…still, apples-to-apples, that larger study was performed in desert scrubland and measured about 4°C increased local temperatures, which is significant but not a good proxy for the weather effects one would see generated by a 750 square-mile convection cell over truly barren desert…
…back to your original question, most solar photovoltaic panels loose somewhere on the order of ¼ to ½ percent efficiency per °C incease in panel temperature, but like most things in the real world it’s actually much more complicated than a simple multiplier…the short version is that investors wouldn’t be building desert arrays if they didn’t present a short-term economic gain, and they certainly do provide plenty of power despite the increased heat, but the long-term environmental impact of radically altering surface albedo at such a large scale isn’t well-understood relative to the implied let alone actual changes in carbon-intensive energy generation…
A better article from NASA that lists way more info, including the goal wattage in 2030 : 100 gigawatts, or roughly 20x the current power generation. It should be able to power roughly 8 million homes when complete.
Reading the two, it’s likely the article the posted one is AI generated/copied from.
Sandy and mostly devoid of life, the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia once had a reputation for being a “sea of death.” More recently, its dune fields have become a sea of photovoltaic possibility, transformed by a surge of newly installed solar panels. The construction is part of China’s multiyear plan to build a “solar great wall” designed to generate enough energy to power Beijing.
The project, expected to be finished in 2030, will be 400 kilometers (250 miles) long, 5 kilometers (3 miles) wide, and achieve a maximum generating capacity of 100 gigawatts. So far, Chinese officials say they have installed about 5.4 gigawatts.
The Kubuqi’s sunny weather, flat terrain, and proximity to industrial centers make it a desirable location for solar power generation. Panels are being installed in a long, narrow band of dunes just south of the Yellow River between the cities of Baotou and Bayannur. The OLI (Operational Land Imager) and OLI-2 on Landsat 8 and 9 captured this pair of images showing the expanding footprint of solar farms between December 2017 (left) and December 2024 (right).
The solar farm that resembles a galloping horse—Junma Solar Power Station—was completed in 2019, setting a Guinness world record for the largest image made of solar panels. It generates approximately 2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, enough to meet the yearly electricity needs of 300,000 to 400,000 people. Junma means “fine horse” in Mandarin.
In addition to generating power, planners hope that the installation will have other benefits. They think it may help curb desertification by preventing the movement of dunes and slowing winds. Also, the elevated panels create shade that slows evaporation and may make it easier to grow pasture grasses and other crops beneath them. Analysis of Landsat data indicates that solar projects have contributed to the greening of deserts in other parts of China in recent years.
As of June 2024, China led the world in operating solar farm capacity with 386,875 megawatts, representing about 51 percent of the global total, according to Global Energy Monitor’s Global Solar Power Tracker. The United States ranks second with 79,364 megawatts (11 percent), followed by India with 53,114 megawatts (7 percent).
China’s solar growth has been particularly rapid during the past decade. Between 2017 and 2023, the country’s operational solar capacity surged by an average of 39,994 megawatts per year. The solar capacity of the United States expanded by an average of 8,137 megawatts over the same period.
I wonder how they built it, if they used slaves or indentured workers?
