- Chinese investment firm Inner Mongolia Energy Group has brought a 1.6 GW photovoltaic plant online in the Ulan Buh Desert near Bayannur, Inner Mongolia.
The company built the plant using inverters from Sineng Electric and 575 W solar modules from an undisclosed manufacturer. Construction started in April 2024.
“The project covers an area of around 2,973 hectares and required an investment of CNY 6.97 billion ($958 million),” a Sineng Electric spokesperson told pv magazine. “For this project, Sineng Electric has provided 2,671 units of its high-power SP-350K-H1 string inverters. Operating at 1,500 V, these inverters support PLC communication and feature 1.1 times overloading capacity.”
Sineng Electric said the space beneath the solar module rows is now being used for large-scale cultivation of sand-fixing plants to combat desertification and soil erosion.
Inner Mongolia hosts China’s largest concentration of utility-scale PV plants, including the Great Solar Wall, a massive cluster of PV projects in the Kubuqi Desert. The site is expected to reach 100 GW by 2030, spanning about 400 km with an average width of 5 km.
The world’s largest PV plant is currently the 3.5 GW Midong solar project in Urumqi, in the Xinjiang region.
Author: Emiliano Bellini
This article was originally published in pv magazine and is republished with permission.
