A groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of a 100MW solar-plus-storage project in Pan’an County was held on October 22, according to an announcement from the county government. The event was attended by local government officials. Pan’an County is under the administration of Jinhua, a city in China’s Zhejiang Province.
The project is the largest of its kind in Jinhua; and unlike other solar-plus-storage projects within the city, this one is designed as a unified generation and storage system. The PV generation component and the battery storage component will be set up together at the same time and enter operation at the same time. The local government expects the project to effectively address the issues of intermittency and instability in the supply of electricity from renewable sources.
Spanning an area of 2,650 mu, the project is scaled at 100MW. The total investment in the project is approximately 520 million yuan. Scheduled for grid connection by the end of 2022, the project is expected to continue operating for 25 years with an average annual electricity output of 128GWh. In terms of environmental benefits, the county estimates that the project will lead to a reduction of 40,100MT in annual coal consumption. Compared with a thermal power plant that has the same generation capacity, the project is estimated to cut CO2 emissions by around 106,900MT per year and other related exhaust emissions by 1,070MT per year. Moreover, the project will save on water use and reduce waste water. All in all, the project offers enormous advantages with respect to energy saving and environmental protection.
The county also stated that the project will be able to store up to 10MWh for every two hours of charging. This amount will be enough to meet the daily power demand of around 2,000 rural households. The county is hoping that the development of this project will provide the impetus for the development of other local green energy projects, thus contributing to the county’s efforts in limiting CO2 emissions and realizing carbon neutrality.
The local subsidiary utility of the State Grid Corporation said that the next step will be carry out the construction and grid connection of the project at full speed so that the facility will begin operation in accordance with the original development schedule. At the same time, efforts will be made to improve the local power infrastructure so that it can accommodate new generation technologies. The ultimate goal is to create a grid system that incorporates a diverse range of generation assets and offers highly flexible power dispatch capability. This way, Pan’an and the rest of Jinhua will be able to pursue economic developments that are ecologically sound and high quality.