China is known for investing more each year in wind, hydro and solar power than any other country on earth. In early June, it further underlined its role as the global leader in renewable energy, by switching on the world’s largest floating solar power plant, according to the World Economic Forum .
The facility is located in the city of Huainan, in China’s eastern Anhui province. It has a capacity of 40 megawatts (MW), enough to power a small town. The plant floats over a flooded former coal-mining region.
Floating solar arrays, that have been in use for a little over a decade, have several advantages:
- they don’t take up any valuable space on land,
- the cooling effect of the water on which the panels float
- they help to mitigate the evaporation of water for drinking or irrigation by intercepting sunlight before it hits a reservoir’s surface.
The largest floating solar array so far was a 6.3MW plant located in the UK. Japan also plans a plant, due to come online next year, that will produce 13.7MW.
China has also been putting the brakes on its fossil fuel consumption. In January, the country’s energy regulator brought a stop to more than 100 coal-fired power plants under construction across the country, with a combined output of 100 gigawatts (GW).
