PowerChina connects 1 GW solar hybrid to the grid at Talatan

From China Solar Thermal Alliance:
October 1, 2026

PowerChina has connected its 1 GW (1000 MW) Gonghe solar project to the grid in the Talatan solar park in Gonghe County, Hainan Prefecture, Qinghai Province. (The gigantic Talatan solar park was made famous in the West, in an article in the NYT)

The PowerChina tower CSP project, its second at Talatan, combines a 100MW molten salt tower CSP plant with 8 hours of thermal energy storage, with a 900MW photovoltaic plant.

Rather than simply sitting side by side, as in most of China’s 1 GW solar parks, these two different kinds of solar plants are linked through electric heaters that let surplus daytime photovoltaic output also charge the CSP plant’s own molten salt tank of stored thermal energy.

That stored heat, together with heat from the tower’s 260 MW-thermal receiver, drives a steam turbine after sunset, so the project can supply power during the evening demand peak rather than only when the sun shines. Binary molten salt serves as both heat transfer fluid and storage medium.

PowerChina Northwest (Northwest Engineering Corporation) built it as engineering, procurement and construction contractor, and Dongfang Boiler supplied the solar field and steam generator systems.

The project sits at about 2,870 meters elevation in the Hainan Ecological Solar Power Generation Park at Talatan and is expected to deliver more than 2.2 TWh a year.

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