Photo Credit ( Pixabay )
The idea that the entire city may be powered by solar energy would sound crazy to anyone strolling beneath the gloomy sky of a foggy Beijing day.However, two images captured by NASA’s Landsat 8 and 9 satellites—a huge grid of solar panels spanning the Inner Mongolian deserts—bring the plan’s essence into sharp relief.
In 2017, the Kubuqi Desert was deserted. Image courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory.
NASA’s Earth Observatory provided the image of the Kubuqi Desert’s solar arrays in 2024.
When the Kubuqi Desert solar array is completed in 2030, it will be the largest in the world by a country mile, measuring 250 miles long by 3 miles wide and producing 5.4 gigawatts at the moment. Known as the “photovoltaic sea,” more than 3 million solar panels are already glistening along a section of largely dead sand.
According to NASA, the Kubuqi is a good site for solar power generation because of its sunny climate, level topography, and close proximity to industrial centres. Between the cities of Baotou and Bayannur, in a long, narrow strip of dunes immediately south of the Yellow River, panels are being erected.
The remarkable advancements between 2017 and 2024 are depicted in a split-screen display, which also features a huge image of a galloping horse that pays homage to Mongolia’s history and culture and holds the Guinness World Record for the largest image created entirely of solar panels.
Currently producing enough electricity to power 400,000 homes, it is known in Chinese as the Fine Horse Solar Power Station.
Chinese officials have a suspicion that the solar arrays could provide tertiary benefits by turning the desert into a more fertile region. The stretch of dunes that the photovoltaic sea is ebbing over was part of an ecosystem that was described as a “sea of death” to Venetian explorer Marco Polo in the 13th century.
