100 panda-shaped solar plants on new Silk Road
Beijing/Hong Kong: In a country where you can find everything from chopsticks to slippers designed to look like pandas, one Chinese energy company is going a step further by building 100 solar farms shaped like the bears along the route of the ambitious Belt and Road initiative.
Panda Green Energy Group has already connected one such 50megawatt (MW) plant to the grid in the northern province of Shanxi, the first step in a public relations stunt that emphasises the cuddly side of the world’s No.2 economy.
Built with darker crystalline silicon and lighter-coloured thin film solar cells, the plant resembles a cartoon giant panda from the air.
“The plant required an investment of 350 million yuan ($52million), and it would require investment of $3 billion for 100 such plants,” Panda Green Energy’s Chief Executive Li Yuan said. Li did not say where the longer-term investment would come from. The Hong Kongbased firm is currently in talks with Canada, Australia, Germany and Italy to launch more panda-shaped power stations. The Belt and Road initiative is a plan to emulate the ancient Silk Road by opening new trade corridors across the globe using roads, power lines, ports and energy pipelines.
A 100-MW panda power plant would be expected to generate 3.2billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy over 25 years, according to the company, capable of supplying power to over 10,000 households annually. Panda Green Energy is currently constructing its second plant in Shanxi.