China Energy Investments today connected the first instalment of its 1GW offshore solar farm to the grid.
Lying some 8km off the coast of Kenli District in Shandong Province, northeast China, it will be the biggest of its kind once complete.
It will have nearly 3,000 platforms spread over 1,200ha of ocean surface.
Upon completion, the project is expected to generate 1,800 GWh of power a year, enough to meet the needs of about 2.7 million people.
China Energy said that output was equivalent to burning 503,800 tonnes of coal.
The company will also use the below-surface steel framework to house fish farms.
Big solar
China Energy is a state-owned company that combines power generation with mining. It had a turnover of $112bn last year, from which it made $6.3bn in profit.
Its other projects include the 3GW Mengxi Lanhai Solar Plant, China’s biggest, in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. That took 14 months to build at a cost of $1.6bn.
It has almost 6 million panels spread over 70 sq km. It was built by Power China on land previously used for coal mining. It includes a number of innovations, including the use of robotic arms, drone docking stations and smart cleaning robots.
The world’s largest operational PV plant is the 3.5GW Midong PV farm in Urumqi, in the western Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
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