A Chinese energy company is installing photovoltaic (PV) solar panels on a salt pan in the country's eastern coastal city of Tianjin to accelerate the nation's progress in reaching its carbon peak and neutrality goals.
For more than 1,000 years, salt has been produced in Tianjin. But as global warming becomes a new challenge for humanity, the large salt flats in the coastal city have taken on a second role as a solar farm.
"Take Tianjin as an example. Land here is very precious. So it is very difficult to find a place to build a photovoltaic power plant. It so happens that this salt pan provides us with a platform. First, it won't affect the production of the salt, nor will it affect aqua farming. Then we might as well build a PV here – it's the latest development trend," said Hannaren Chaogtu, deputy general manager of Huadian New Energy Group, Tianjin Branch.
Power major China Huadian Corporation made a deal with a local salt-making firm and by 2023 had finished building solar panels in 76 ponds covering more than 1,266 hectares of salt flats, making it the world's largest "salt-PV" complementary project.
The project has been operational for more than 6 months, and is said to be on track to generate 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, which could power about 1.5 million homes in the region.
The biggest obstacle the company had to overcome was to install the PV panels in salt water, which presented both an engineering challenge and a scientific puzzle.
Thanks to joint research with universities, they managed to solve the twin problems by finding materials that would be resistant to corrosion.
The project has also been visited by delegations from the European Union, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Vietnam, and several other countries who are interested in copying the model.
"I have received visitors from Indonesia. When they came to our project, they went up to our viewing platform and saw the whole operation. They were awestruck that China could build such a good salt-solar complementary project. They were particularly interested in how we built this project," said Hannaren, adding that the motivation behind this project is to help China hit the "dual carbon" goals of reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
The company is now exploring opportunities to expand this project and to find other places where the land can be used for both solar power -generating and something else, such as fishing or farming.
According to the National Energy Agency, China's total solar capacity reached 610 GW in 2023, making it the fastest-growing in the world. Solar is also now the second largest energy source in China, after coal.
But to meet future demands and to gradually replace fossil fuels, even more solar panels need to be installed.
Innovative salt pan solar project gets China nearer dual carbon targets
