A huge solar power station in China is generating clean energy, producing salt from sunlight, and serving as a shrimp-breeding site.
State-owned China Huadian Corporation said the 1-gigawatt (GW) Huadian Tianjin Haijing power station will generate 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year – enough to power around 1.5 million households in China.
The solar panels at the farm are bifacial, which means they benefit from both direct sun and sunlight that reflects from the water beneath.
The panels are built over more than 13 square kilometers (5 square miles) of the Changlu salt fields, one of China’s oldest coastal salt farms. The distance between the solar panel arrays is 14 meters (46 feet) – almost double that in a usual solar farm – to allow in the necessary sunshine for salt making.
The salt fields are also being used for aquaculture – in this case, to breed shrimp. At full capacity, the solar + salt + shrimp farm is expected to save 500,000 tons of standard coal each year and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.25 million tons.
