People assume that the booming economy in China over the past 30 years has made all Chinese citizens wealthy. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Zhangbei County, just 150 miles northwest of Beijing, there are 128 low income villages where residents struggle to get by. Now all those villages are in line to benefit from a 300 kilowatt solar power plant. The project will use 140,000 solar panels supplied by Yingli. They will be installed on ground mounted systems with sun tracking capability to maximize power output.
Once completed, the total installed capacity of the distributed solar systems will equal 38.4 MW. Sales of zero emissions electricity from the systems will benefit the more than 10,000 low income villagers in the county over the next 20 years. 10,000 of the solar panels will be Yingli’s advanced Panda Bifacial products. The multi-crystalline black silicon panels feature 12 bus bars.
In a press release, Bo Yu, vice general manager of Yingli, said:
“We are glad to supply our advanced PV panels for this poverty alleviation project in Zhangbei County, which is also the part of practice of our corporate social responsibility. With reliable quality and excellent performance, Yingli Solar panels can maximally guarantee the sustainable and stable power generation of the project, effectively increasing the income of local low income villagers from green solar electricity sales. The project is of great significance to local poverty alleviation and environment protection.”
Zhangbei County has been at the center of China’s push to replace coal-fired generating plants with solar power plants. Blessed with abundant sunshine, the area was the site for one of China’s first large solar installations in 2010, a 200 megawatt facility spanning an area nearly 10 square kilometers in size. There are also numerous wind turbines installed within the county, which seeks to lead China’s transition to zero emissions power in an effort to reduce the poor air quality in many parts of the country resulting from burning massive amounts of coal.
Source: cleantechnica.com
