Fukang 100-MW Tower CSP Plant Connects, Lifting China Past Spain

• China Green Development connected its 100-MW molten-salt tower CSP plant in Fukang, Xinjiang, to the grid on Oct. 30.
• The plant lifted China's CSP fleet to 2,438 MW, ahead of Spain, according to the China Solar Thermal Alliance.
• It is now in trial operation next to 900 MW of PV in the same complex; no commercial-service date was given.

China Green Development connected a 100-megawatt molten-salt tower concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Fukang, in China's Xinjiang region, to the grid at 9:21 a.m. on Oct. 30. The plant has entered trial operation.

Its start-up took China's cumulative CSP capacity to 2,438 MW, surpassing Spain, the China Solar Thermal Alliance (CSTA) said on Nov. 2. By the alliance's count, that puts China first in the world.

The tower is one part of a 1-GW solar complex that also holds 900 MW of PV. Both parts are now generating, the developer said. The complex belongs to Xinjiang's second batch of market-based clean energy bases. It is China Green Development's first CSP plant in Xinjiang and the first in Changji prefecture.

The plant uses Cosin Solar's tower molten-salt technology. Cosin supplied the core equipment for the concentrating and heat-collection system and for molten-salt storage and heat exchange, it said. Zhejiang Lvfa Kesheng Thermal Storage Technology and the Inner Mongolia Electric Power Survey & Design Institute built it as an EPC consortium, CSTA reported.

The Fukang plant in numbers

• 236 meters is the height of the receiver tower, served by 15,697 heliostats with about 580,000 square meters of mirror area.
• 8 hours of molten-salt storage, rated by Cosin at 1,881 MWh of heat, or about 800 MWh at the 100-MW nameplate (list.solar calculation).
• 120 GWh of expected yearly output, about 1,200 full-load hours or a capacity factor near 14% (list.solar calculation).
• 1,675 GWh a year is the expected output of the whole 1-GW complex, Cosin said.
• 138 MW is China's lead over Spain, whose 49 plants total 2,300 MW, according to Protermosolar (list.solar calculation).
• 4.1% of China's 2,438-MW CSP fleet sits in Fukang (list.solar calculation).
• 2.32 GW of Chinese CSP at end-September, up 43% year on year with 500 MW added since January, the National Energy Administration said.

The Fukang tower is taller than the 199-meter towers topped out in October at two 350-MW Qinghai plants still under construction. They are Cosin Solar's Golmud project and the Delingha plant.

China Green Development has not said when trial operation will end. Once in service, the plant should save about 40,000 metric tons of standard coal a year, the developer said.