Small Island Nation, Big Clean Energy Plans Nuku’alofa, Tonga

195K

TONs OF CO₂ EMIssIONs REdUCEd ANNUAllY

Inhabitants 78,184

GdP per capita $6,086

Geographic area 27,700 km²

ThE ChAllENGE

Delingha has an abundance of solar resources that can propel the growth of a solarbased industry, but the city is constrained with limited financial resources and handson technology experience.

CO-BENEFITs

Economic

Employment opportunities will help to diversify and boost the local economy.

social

This project is contributing to diversifying the local economic base as well as creating 334 unskilled jobs annually during construction and 30 permanent jobs during operation and maintenance.

Concentrated mitigation efforts

delingha’s new Concentrated solar Power (CsP) project is providing a boost of 50 MW of clean energy to the power grid and reducing CO2 every year. equivalent emissions by an estimated 195,000 tons

The 50 MW CSP plant in the city of Delingha, Qinghai Province, is the first of its kind in the PRC and came into operation in May 2020. The plant works using parabolically shaped panels that concentrate sunlight to heat water to steam, which in turn drives a turbine to create power. The thermal element of the design allows the plant to be combined with energy storage facilities, thus providing greater flexibility compared with traditional wind or solar energy. The plant will reduce an estimated 195,000 tCO2e emissions per year.

As well as constructing the first-of-its-kind utility-scale CSP plant in Qinghai Province, the project also includes capacity development and training in CSP design, construction, and operation and management.

The project was made possible through an ADB loan of $150 million and $96.68 million in counterpart financing from the China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN).

Concentrated solar power technology. The parabolically shaped panels concentrate light to heat water to produce steam, which in turn drives a turbine to create electricity (photo by CGN Delingha Solar Energy, Co. Ltd.).