The plant is being built on 2,550ha of land of the Gobi Desert in Golmud City, Qinghai Province. It will feature heliostats, which focus sunlight onto a central tower to generate energy.
After completion, the plant will generate enough energy for about 1 million local households and help the country reduce 896,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
Qinghai Solar-Thermal Power Group board chairman Wu Longyi was quoted Xinhua News Agency as saying, "Its designed heat storage is 15 hours, thus, it can guarantee stable, continual power generation."
China is planning to increase solar power capacity to about 100GW by 2020. The capacity has increased 400 times to 28.05GW by 2014, compared the generation capacity in 2005.
The country invested about $90bn into its solar and wind sectors in 2014. China is planning to install around 17.8GW of solar projects this year, in order to combat its air pollution problems.
The National Energy Administration (NEA) China’s northern province of Hebei with the highest amount of air pollution is expected to secure around 1.2GW of solar projects this year.
Provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Qinghai and Ningxia will each have 1GW of solar installations.
