Building solar farms where the land is big

(Posted June 2022) One of the challenges with renewable energy is that the best places to build solar and wind farms aren’t next to cities and industrial facilities where power is needed. Huawei technologies help to solve that riddle.

The vast province of Qinghai in the western part of China has a lot of space for solar farms. It is home to less than 6 million people, a fraction of Shanghai’s population. And yet, at 720,000 square kilometers, it is China’s third largest province. The scenery in much of Qinghai consists of vast blue skies, verdant hills, and herds of wandering cattle and sheep.

Huanghe Hydropower Development built in Gonghe County, Qinghai, the country’s largest PV farm. Covering a massive area, the 2.2 gigawatt facility consists of over 7 million PV modules.

The power generated is carried from Gonghe to Henan province, 1563 kilometers to the east. Home to 100 million people, Henan is one of China’s most populated provinces. This is the world’s first project using ultra high voltage power lines to transport green energy over long distances. Huawei solar inverters and other power electronics technologies play a central role in making the installation run smoothly.