World’s largest floating solar farm comes online with wind and storage

Beijing-headquartered electric power company Huaneng Power International (HPI) has completed the world’s largest floating solar project in Dezhou, which is in Shandong, an eastern Chinese province on the Yellow Sea. The 320 megawatt (MW) project is the largest floating solar farm to come online to date.

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World’s largest floating solar farm

The Dezhou Dingzhuang floating solar farm, which sits in a reservoir near a 2.65 GW HPI coal-fired power station, is connected to a 100 MW wind farm and 8 MWh of battery storage. All three together form the Huaneng Dezhou Dingzhuang Integrated Wind and Solar Energy Storage project. They all share power infrastructure that feeds the energy to the grid.

PV Magazine shares the details:

HPI built the solar plant in two phases with capacities of 200 MW and 120 MW, respectively. The first phase, which included the deployment of 8 MWh of storage capacity, was completed in 2020, while the second phase was finished between mid-September and the end of December. The facility is expected to generate around 550 million kWh of electricity per year, the company said, without disclosing additional technical details.

Huaneng won’t hold the “largest” title for long, as a 600 MW floating solar farm is expected to come online in Madhya Pradesh, India, by 2023.

Electrek’s Take

Any large renewables that come online anywhere, much less China, should be celebrated. The Chinese government says it’s not going to reduce coal consumption in China until after 2025. China’s president Xi Jinping said in September that China would cease to build coal-fired power projects abroad. That’s great.

But China, which is already responsible for a whopping half of global coal-fired power generation, is still launching new coal plants domestically to meet its enormous power demand. Reuters writes:

A report published this month by researchers at China’s State Grid Corporation said energy security concerns mean the country is likely to build as much as 150 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity over the 2021-2025 period, bringing the total to 1,230 GW.

Let’s hope China keeps launching even more large renewable projects like this floating solar farm so that the tide turns and renewables can supply the power that China needs. Because new coal coming online up to 2025 is worrying.

Read more: World’s largest offshore floating wind farm is now complete

Photo: Huaneng Power International