If you ask about the biggest oolong incident in the history of infrastructure construction on the mainland, then the Tara Beach Gobi in Qinghai must be on the list.
Originally, the relevant departments planned to build a photovoltaic power generation project here, but what people didn't expect was that in the end, a natural pasture was harvested.
What's going on here?
Build power plants in the desert
"There is no grass growing on the ground, the wind blows the stones and runs, and the wind blows from spring to winter once a year. ”
This sentence is used to describe the Tara Beach in Qinghai Province.
This is an area known for desertification, and it is one of the most affected areas by wind and sand in the Jiangyuan region.
If you've been here, you'll find that Tara Beach is even more exaggerated than other desert areas, and from a distance, it looks like a whole Gobi desert.
It can be said that this is simply the best depiction of no grass.
In this desert, in addition to the flying sand in the sky, there is also up to twelve hours of light every day.
If you know more about the geography of our country, you can easily understand the situation of Tara Beach, which is located in the most serious position of the sandstorm in the upper reaches of the Yellow River.
As early as more than a decade ago, the desertification rate of Tara Beach was as high as 98.5%, and it can be said that there is basically no vegetation in this large area.
Sand dunes are everywhere in Tara Beach, and the altitude can even reach as high as 2,920 meters, which is not suitable for the growth of crops and plants at all.
As desertification has not improved at all, it has become more and more serious, and the living conditions of the residents near Tara Beach have become very poor.
In the face of such a harsh environment, people simply cannot carry out their normal lives, so they choose to leave here.
Therefore, how to manage Tara Beach has always been a very tricky matter.
However, with the development of science and technology, the emergence of many new industries has solved the difficulties currently faced by Tara Beach, the most obvious of which is the emerging industry photovoltaic power generation in recent years.
You know, the so-called photovoltaic power generation is actually the conversion of solar energy into electricity.
And in this process, the most important thing is "light", if there is no light, then nothing is to talk about, no matter how powerful photovoltaic power generation can not play any role.
For Tara Beach, there's no shortage of light, and half of the day is lit up.
Therefore, Tara Beach, which was originally useless and would only annoy people, also has an innate geographical advantage.
According to the relevant data, the average annual sunshine here has exceeded 3,000 hours, and its average annual power generation can reach 32.9 billion kilowatt hours.
This data is very unexpected for photovoltaic power generation.
Besides, Tara Beach is one of the largest uninhabited areas on the mainland, and it is a sparsely populated area that is ideal for building large-scale equipment such as photovoltaic power generation.
No matter which point of view, it is a very good choice to install photovoltaic power generation equipment in Tara Beach.
In fact, when the relevant technicians arrived at Tara Beach for the first time, they had already determined in their hearts that this was the best ideal location for building a photovoltaic power station.
After various investigations, in 2010, the National Energy Administration approved the project to build photovoltaic power generation in Tara Beach.
Power plant turned ranch?
In the construction of this photovoltaic power station, it was not all smooth sailing.
One of the biggest problems is sandstorms, and it is indeed very difficult to build a power plant in the dust, after all, people have to endure the invasion of wind and sand all year round.
It is important to know that solar panels are very fragile and can be easily damaged by wind and sand, which will not only affect the efficiency of power generation, but also increase costs.
In order to solve this problem, the mainland staff actually sprinkled a layer of grass seeds on the desert before construction, which is also to reduce the "flying" degree of wind and sand.
Not only that, they also planted a lot of acid- and salt-resistant plants such as sea buckthorn and caragana around the power station, which is also to form a natural barrier against wind and sand fixation.
Thanks to the efforts of the people, the construction of the photovoltaic power plant in Tara Beach can be regarded as a successful completion.
In the beginning, the area of the photovoltaic power plant here was just over 70 square kilometers.
Today, however, this area has increased to 609 square kilometers.
If you just look at this number, you can't actually feel the area of this power station at all, after all, the area of the entire Tara Beach is as high as 2,136 square kilometers, which also makes the number 609 simply not worth mentioning.
But we can change the reference, for example, if we compare it with Singapore's land area of 724 square kilometers, then our photovoltaic power plants are almost equivalent to the area of a country.
However, what many people did not expect was that it was originally planned to build a photovoltaic power plant, but with the construction of the power plant, it turned into a pasture, and a lot of sheep came to "forage" every day.
And the reason behind this is actually making people laugh and cry.
You know, if you want to build a photovoltaic power plant in the desert, then you have to tidy up the land here, such as clearing wild grass and rocks, planting some new plants and grass seeds, etc.
Under normal circumstances, photovoltaic panels are very "sensitive" because they are not allowed to have any stains or floating dust, otherwise, it will affect the conversion efficiency of solar energy.
In order to solve this problem, professional staff will clean the photovoltaic panels every day, and the water droplets during the cleaning process will flow to the ground.
After a long time, some of the grass seeds that people originally planted underneath were nourished with plenty of water.
In this process, the photovoltaic panels do a good job of blocking the sunlight for the seeds in the soil, so that the temperature of the ground is not so high.
In addition, when cleaning the solar panels, there will also be water droplets left, which also provides a very sufficient amount of moisture for the ground.
Over time, some new "shoots" can also grow on the original desert.
However, if these weeds are long-lasting, they will grow unscrupulously, thus blocking the photovoltaic panels and affecting the power generation function of the photovoltaic panels.
At this time, the cattle and sheep raised by herdsmen also played a very important role, that is, "eating grass".
In this way, cattle and sheep can eat pure natural grass, and the photovoltaic panels will not be affected by weeds to generate electricity, which is simply a matter of killing two birds with one stone.
The original power plant has become a "pasture" for cattle and sheep.
I have to say that it was originally an unintentional move by people, but in the end there was a win-win situation.
These sheep that grow up eating grass under the photovoltaic panels are also known as "photovoltaic sheep", and their slaughter can even reach 50,000, and they are also sold to the outside world.
It is no exaggeration to say that the photovoltaic power plant built on Tara Beach is one of the best not only in the mainland, but also in the world.
Information sources:
China News Network "Qinghai Tara Beach: From Desert Beach to the World's Largest Photovoltaic Power Generation Park"2023-11-22 15:38
China Green Times, "Qinghai Hainan: Promoting Green Development with Photovoltaic Desertification Control" 2023-10-30