The groundbreaking ceremony of China’s largest CSP tower plant was held in Qinghai province on July 20, 2015.
Occupying 25.5 square kilometers of the Gobi Desert in Golmud City, the CSP plant has a planned installed capacity of 200MW and will cost RMB 5.38 billion yuan. Once completed, it will be capable of supplying electricity to one million households, according to Wu Yilong, president of Qinghai Solar-Thermal Power Group.
It is reported that the plant will equipped with 15 hours of thermal storage using molten salt as the storage medium. With the thermal storage capacity, it can generate electricity 24 hours a day. The plant is expected to be connected to the grid by the end of July 2018. The calculated annual power generation is 1120GWh, saving a total of 10.6 million tons of coal and reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide by 22.4 million tons and 202 thousand tons respectively.
