Different from the ancient human "blind man touching the elephant" to explore the earth, now human beings can accurately obtain satellite images of various regions of the earth by flying satellites near the earth to determine various changes in weather, climate, environment and so on. For example, NASA's high-speed satellite orbiting the Earth pointed at the desert in China in April 2019 and recorded the unique landscape here.
On April 22, 2019, NASA satellites captured a strange scene in northwest China - located in the Tengger Desert near Zhongwei City in Ningxia, northwest, where the original desert yellow landscape was replaced by a large gray regular area.
The scene captured by NASA satellites is actually one of the largest solar farms in the world. In the northwest of China, the dry and rainy climate model makes it possible to have a large amount of sunlight all year round, and the solar energy resources are particularly abundant, so it is one of the best development areas for solar power generation projects. The solar farm in the Tengger Desert covers an area of 43 square kilometers, providing China with 1.5 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to one billion watts of solar power.
But who would have thought that in 2013, not long ago, it was a desolate desert - NASA also gave satellite images of the area taken by satellites on April 11, 2013, compared with April 2019, in 2013, there were only a small range of solar power facilities in the south, and now a large area of yellow sand has been replaced by solar farms, and more man-made buildings have been added around the solar farms.
In fact, solar power projects are underway in many countries around the world, and the Tengger Desert Solar Power Project is unlikely to maintain its largest position for a long time. However, the completion of the Tengger solar power project has also made China's installed solar capacity more than 176 GW. According to data released by the International Energy Agency, China is already the world leader in terms of installed capacity, accounting for 32% of the global total, followed by the European Union and the United States.
Compared with other energy sources, solar energy can be described as inexhaustible, is now considered a kind of clean energy, but solar power generation also has limitations, mainly affected by the weather, cloudy days, rainy days or sandstorms when the power generation efficiency will be greatly reduced, in addition to the global solar power farms are mostly built in dry deserts, sandstorms will be covered with dust on the surface of the solar collection device, thereby further reducing the power generation efficiency, so the power output is not stable.
Therefore, Tengger's total installed capacity of 1.5 GW does not mean that 100% of the energy will be collected and used, and NASA has also observed similar rapid expansion of solar farms in Dunhuang, Gansu, Longyangxia, Qinghai and other places. Chinese mainland the rapid increase in solar power projects remains a sign of determination – for now, the development and use of clean energy sources such as solar energy has very positive implications for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and curbing global warming.
Qinghai Longyangxia Hydropower Station and Solar Power Farm