The Power Of the Desert
New mega energy base propels the transformation of Kubuqi Desert into a source of economic growth
Dalad Banner in Ordos, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China, is characterised by a seemingly endless stretch of barren land. Kubuqi, China’s seventh-largest desert, occupies nearly one-third of the county-equivalent banner’s land area. How to transform and utilise this barren land has been a focus of the banner’s development.
Thanks to abundant light and wind resources in the desert, wind and solar power generation has emerged as an important way to reap economic and ecological benefits from the desert.
Now, the desert features a new vast expanse of blue. On 29 December 2023, the first pilot project of China Three Gorges’ (CTG) wind and photovoltaic base in central and north Kubuqi was completed and connected to the grid, with a capacity of 1 gw.
The project comprises 350,000 tall concrete pillars supporting millions of photovoltaic panels, covering more than 30,000 mu (2,000 hectares) of desert, stretching as far as the eye can see.
These are only a small part of the total planned capacity of the base, which is 12 gw, including 8 gw of photovoltaics and 4 gw of wind power. Once fully completed, Dalad Banner’s new energy production capacity will multiply.
Massive project
The base is an outcome of a plan released in February 2022 by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration to develop large-scale wind and solar power generation bases in the country’s desert areas.
In a bid to meet the country’s carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, the NDRC proposed to plan and construct such bases mostly in the Kubuqi, Ulan Buh, Tengger and Badain Jaran deserts. According to the plan, the bases will have a total installed capacity of approximately 455 gw by 2030.
The plan discourages construction of very small projects, believing that the large scale of the bases can quickly improve the share of clean energy in China’s energy production. It also requires existing coal-burning power plants around these bases to be upgraded for higher efficiency and used as supportive power source.
As a leading player in clean energy development in China, CTG was among the first to respond to the call and joined hands with a local company to invest in and construct the Kubuqi base. The project, after completion, will save 6 million tonnes of standard coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 16 million tonnes every year.
“I feel very honoured to be able to participate in the construction of a new energy base of this size,” Bei
Yaoping, deputy general manager of Inner Mongolia Three Gorges Mengneng Energy Co. Ltd. (TGME), a joint venture of CTG with Inner Mongolia’s leading energy company Mengneng Group, told ChinAfrica.
With 13 years of experience in solar power construction, Bei has personally witnessed the accelerated development of China’s clean energy construction. “Initially, I was doing projects of 10 to 20 mw,” he said.
Despite the various challenges such as harsh natural conditions, Bei and his colleagues are full of enthusiasm. The first 1-gw pilot of the project started construction in April 2023 and was connected to the grid for power generation by the end of the year, creating a new record in CTG in terms of construction speed. In the busiest days, nearly 200 bulldozers were carrying out land levelling operations at the same time, and thousands of people worked in the evening when the weather is cooler.
The base is designed to include not only wind and photovoltaic power capacity, but also a supporting capacity of approximately 4 gw of coal power and energy storage capacity of approximately 3 to 5 gwh, a typical combination for such bases. This helps to overcome the major shortcoming of wind and photovoltaic power generation, which is instability. In peak hours of clean energy generation, surplus output is saved in storage facilities, which is then used in hours of short supply with the support of coal-fired power, thus maintaining stable output of the base.
According to Na Guiting, vice chairman of TGME, the combination based on careful calculation will ensure the base’s stable power output of 8 gw. Over 90 percent of the generated clean energy will be utilised, and the proportion of clean energy in the base’s output will be more than 50 percent.
The generated power will be transmitted to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region through an ultra-high voltage power transmission project to be built. Currently, power from the pilot project is sent to the local grid. After the whole project is completed, it will be able to deliver 44 billion kwh of clean electricity annually.
On the same day when the first pilot project was connected to the grid, CTG announced the start of the subsequent construction of the base. According to its plan, the entire project will be completed and connected to the grid by the end of 2025.
Progress is also made in other big base projects. In Inner Mongolia, for example, the other three projects with similar capacity, including one in the southern part of Kubuqi Desert, have started their pilot projects,
As a leading player in clean energy development in China, CTG was among the first to respond to the call and joined hands with a local company to invest in and construct the Kubuqi base.