That China is building power plants As if there were no secret, it is not a secret. Without going any further, in the last four years it has been able to replicate the power of the United States, the largest electrical grid in the West. And a good part of the blame solar energy has it. In fact, in 2023 it installed more solar panels than the United States in all of history, as reported by Bloomberg. Solar energy requires space, so China is finding the most varied gaps, from the tibetan plateau to the open sea, where from the end of 2025 It is already connected to the electrical network a mega solar plant that breaks records. In China there are solar panels even in the soup.
The largest offshore solar plant in the world. We are talking about the solar plant located off the coast of Kenli district in Dongying city, Shandong province. This engineering project is carried out by China Energy Investment Corporation (CHN Energy) and has a nominal capacity of 1 GW. As explains People’s Dailythe official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is China’s first gigawatt-level offshore photovoltaic project and currently the largest offshore solar installation in the world.
This is what the Shandong plant looks like. Via: People’s Daily
The context: why at sea. Because land space near its large coastal cities is a precious commodity. The Chinese government has a policy of red line to safeguard land used for agriculture and solve the line “Hu Huanyong Line“: while its great solar and wind potential is concentrated in the west, in the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia, the megacities and their most powerful industrial fabric are in the east.
China is already developing parks of renewables in their deserts, but running Ultra High Voltage lines is very expensive, involves losses along the way and crosses complicated orography. The logical but technically infernal solution is to jump into the water. Until now, floating solar energy was limited to calm waters, such as what Germany is doing with its lakesbut China is another story. The open sea brings salt corrosion, typhoons and waves.
Why is it important. Because China’s coastal provinces such as Shandong or Jiangsu constitute large centers of industrial consumption. Generating energy right there avoids those transportation losses of thousands of kilometers from the Gobi desert. If it works within the expected design parameters and the maintenance costs are affordable, it will be a good boost to take advantage of the coasts within the energy transition process from fossil to renewables.
The panels are simply colossal. Via: X from People’s Daily
A prodigious work of engineering. We are talking about an area of more than 1,200 hectares where 2,934 enormous marine photovoltaic panels are located with standardized dimensions of 60 meters long and 35 meters wide. And they are not drifting panels: it is a large infrastructure designed to withstand extreme conditions ranging from storms to freezing water.
In addition, it is hybridized: under the panels the project integrates fish farms, that is, producing electricity above and fish below. This type of combination is not new, as in Guizhou province there is a giant solar plant in whose basement mushrooms are grown. Shandong is aquavoltaic and Guizhou is agrivoltaic.
Some numbers that make you dizzy. This installed power of 1 Gigawatt is similar to that of a modern nuclear reactor, so that according to estimates, it will be capable of producing 1,780 million kWh of energy that will be fed into the grid each year and thus supply 2.6 million homes in the region. approximately 60% of your demand. According to the estimates of the engineering company behind it, 1.3 million tons of carbon dioxide will no longer be emitted.
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Cover | People’s Daily
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