Sept 09 , 2015
News
World’s largest solar park to light up Pakistan
BAHAWALPUR - Some 400,000 solar panels, spread over 200 hectares of flat desert, glare defiantly at the sun at what is known as the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park in Cholistan Desert, Punjab, named after Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
The 100 megawatts photovoltaic cells (PV) solar farm was built by Chinese company Xinjiang SunOasis in just three months, and started selling electricity to the national grid in August.
This is the first energy project under the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key part of China’s ‘New Silk Road’, linking the port at Gwadar in southern Pakistan with Kashgar in China’s western region of Xinjiang.
The 100-megawatt plant is the pilot stage of a more ambitious plan to build the world’s largest solar farm. Once completed in 2017, the site could have capacity of 5.2 million PV cells producing as much as 1,000 megawatts of electricity – enough to power about 320,000 households. Construction of the next stage is already underway, led by another Chinese company Zonergy.
Eighteen months ago, the site was nothing more than wilderness. Now a mini city has emerged in the middle of the desert, with over 2,000 workers accompanied by heavy machinery, power transmission lines, blocks of buildings, water pipes and pylons.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk