In China, a solar power plant that works even at night

China continues to amaze the world with its constant innovations green, especially in the energy sector, where the country has now achieved the title of "greenest nation in the world". The gigantic solar power plant, in the Xinjiang desert, is a system ibrido: about 900 MW They come from standard photovoltaic panels, which only run on sunlight, but additional energy is also generated in the eight hours after sunset. There are 260 slowly rotating mirrors, tracking the sun from morning to night, heating the molten salt to 550 degrees Celsius and storing it in large tanks. When the sun sets, the salt continues to work for another eight hours, producing energy in the dead of night, without using lithium batteries.

For the new hybrid plant in the Gobi Desert (approx. 1 GW: 900 MW photovoltaic + 100 MW solar thermal with storage), called Hami, estimates speak of an annual production of approximately 1,86 billion in kWh, sufficient to feed approximately 1,5 million Chinese families.

In the whole world there are only a few dozen of Concentrated solar power plants (CSP) with molten salt thermal storage, that is, those that can continue to produce electricity after sunset, but none so far had achieved the results and power of the Chinese plant.