China floats its first gigawatt scale offshore solar park, and completes 3GW PV project at old coal mine

Chinese state-owned mining and energy company CHN Energy has completed the installation of two large-scale solar PV projects, including the world’s second-largest solar facility measuring in at 3GW, and the world’s first gigawatt-scale offshore solar PV project.

The 3GW Mengxi Lanhai Solar Power Station, located in Inner Mongolia, was officially connected to the grid on November 5, at a cost of CNY12 billion ($A2.54 billion). It consists of 5.9 million solar PV panels and was built on a coal mining subsidence area which has seen extensive coal extraction.

In addition to being the largest solar project on a coal mining subsidence area in China, it is also the second largest solar PV project in the world, coming in behind the 3.5 GW Midong solar project in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwestern China.

The project is expected to generate 5.7TWh of electricity each year, the equivalent power necessary to power 2 million households, and will offset 1.71 million tonnes of standard coal, helping to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around 4.7 million tonnes.

According to CHN Energy, the project is also paired with agricultural use, including the planting of various crops to provide feed for cattle and sheep, while the solar panels are installed at a height to allow for animals to graze underneath.

The project will also play host to China’s first large-scale outdoor photovoltaic testing base in a desert-Gobi-wasteland climate zone and was the first project to make use of new rare earth alloy grounding materials, which has lowered overall costs by 40 per cent.

Meanwhile, steel was used instead of concrete for the solar panel foundations, helping to reduce the impact on the local grassland ecosystem.

Separately, as announced on November 13, CHN Energy has also connected the first batch of solar PV units to the grid at the world’s first gigawatt-scale offshore solar PV project located off the coast of Dongying City, Shandong Province, an eastern Chinese province on the Yellow Sea.

The unnamed 1GW offshore solar PV project delivered its first electricity on Wednesday, and when completed is expected to be capable of generating 1.78TWh of electricity each year.

It will consist of 2,934 photovoltaic platforms, and the project is the first in the world to use large-scale offshore steel truss platform fixed pile foundation construction technology.

The project is set to be paired with a fish farm which CHN Energy expects to bring in CNY27 million ($A5.7 million) each year, further enhancing the value of the offshore area.