The Aksai Huidong New Energy solar farm, China's largest solar power tower project, was connected to the power grid at full capacity on Saturday.
Located in Aksai Kazakh Autonomous County in northwest China's Gansu Province, this cutting-edge project sets itself apart by employing Chinese-initiated pentagonal heliostats, each weighing up to 1.2 tons and covering 48 square meters, to receive focused sunlight through the tower.
Altogether, the project boasts a substantial 750 MW installed gross capacity, including 110 MW of solar thermal power and 640 MW of photovoltaic power, with the latter connected to the grid in mid-August.
To reduce power plant costs and address issues such as fluctuations and intermittent blackouts, the project introduced a solution called intelligent coupling -- the integration of various smart technologies to enhance efficiency and monitoring.
"During the day, while the photovoltaic panels continue to generate electricity, the heliostats installed at the solar thermal area collects sunlight and send it to the surface of the heat absorber on the top of the tower to heat the fused slat for storage of the thermal energy. The energy will be released at night to generate steam, which can drive the generator sets to generate electricity. The mode makes it possible to generate electricity for eight hours stably at night, coping with the fluctuations and intermittency of a single photovoltaic power plant and significantly improving the economy of the power station," said Fang Jun, manager of the project.
The solar farm is expected to generate 1.7 billion kWh of power annually.
China's largest solar power tower project linked to power grid
The financial data released Friday by the People's Bank of China -- the nation's central bank -- show that the overall financial aggregates has expanded at a relatively fast pace since the beginning of this year with the social financing conditions remaining accommodative.
The M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, increased by 9 percent year on year to 349.22 trillion yuan (about 50.64 trillion U.S. dollars) by the end of last month, according to the People's Bank of China.
Friday's data also show that the outstanding aggregate financing to the real economy stood at 451.4 trillion yuan (65.45 trillion U.S. dollars) at the end of last month, growing 8.2 percent year on year.
The aggregate financing to the real economy was 9.6 trillion yuan (1.39 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first two months, which was 316.2 billion yuan (45.85 billion U.S. dollars) more than the same period last year.
Experts said that this year's macro policies have been more proactive and effective, supporting a rapid growth in the total financial volume.
In terms of monetary policy, at the beginning of this year, the central bank rolled out a number of additional policy measures including lowering the interest rates of structural policy tools.
Meanwhile, it maintained ample liquidity in the banking system and the social financing conditions were in a relatively relaxed state.
The net financing of government bonds of this year has reached 11.9 trillion yuan (1.73 trillion U.S. dollars), hitting a record high, said Zhang Yu, chief macro-economy analyst of the Hua Chuang Securities. She also said that in the first two months of this year, the scale of treasury bond issuance and local government bond issuance rose by about 12 percent and 8.5 percent respectively compared to the previous year, providing favorable support for the scale of social financing.
Experts said that the financing demands are significantly growing as companies resume operations after the Spring Festival holiday. Along with the launch of new policies during the 2026 annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee earlier this month, and the accelerated start of implementation of major projects for the "15th Five-Year Plan" (2026-2030) period for national socioeconomic development, the demand for supporting financing is expected to be unleashed steadily, and the total financial volume is anticipated to maintain a reasonable growth trend.
Central bank data reflect financial aggregates expand at fast pace in China
