World's first dual tower concentrated solar power plant starts commissioning, testing in China's Gansu

The major part of the world's first dual tower concentrated solar power (CSP) plant has started commissioning and testing in Guazhou County of northwest China's Gansu Province, and it is expected to officially generate power by the end of this year,  said its operator, the China Three Gorges Corporation, on Monday.

The molten-salt CSP power plant, consisting of two solar towers, works by using nearly 30,000 mirrors that concentrate the sunlight onto the receiver at the top of the solar towers, which then heats the molten salt and drives electricity generators.

As the power plant can store surplus solar energy using the molten salt, it can deliver stable and uninterrupted electricity round the clock.

"The project adopts a dual-tower, dual-mirror-field design, so that the heliostat located between the two mirror fields can serve either solar tower, boosting the optical efficiency by about 24 percent under the same boundary conditions. The system also features a six-hour molten-salt thermal storage system, enabling long storage duration, rapid response, and stable power output," said Wen Jianghong, the project manager.

After being put into operation, the power plant is expected to generate 1.8 billion kWh of power annually, which can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.53 million tons per year.

The project also incorporates various other innovative features to enhance the efficiency of power generation.

For starters, the project's mirror arrays can rotate freely and track the sun's position throughout the day like sunflowers, therefore converting a greater amount of solar energy into green electricity.

The mirrors feature ultra-white glass made from specialized materials, providing high optical clarity and the ability to reflect 94 percent of the sunlight towards the solar receivers.

The molten salt used in the solar power system has a boiling point of 600 degrees Celsius, able to store heat several times more effectively than water.

Compared with the conventional single-tower photovoltaic power plant, the dual-tower or even multi-tower design is not limited by installed capacity constraints. Therefore, its power generation efficiency, capacity, and energy storage capability will be significantly enhanced.

Known as CSP, solar thermal energy is believed to be the next generation of solar energy, and an ideal green power source.

World's first dual tower concentrated solar power plant starts commissioning, testing in China's Gansu

Chinese airlines have recorded over 700 million passenger trips so far this year, marking a record high in the history of China's civil aviation development, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

As of Sunday, the country's airlines reported a total of 700.48 million passenger trips since the start of the year, CAAC data showed. The total number of the air passenger trips for 2023 was 620 million, according to CAAC figures.

The daily average number of passenger trips has exceeded 2 million, which is 18.1 percent higher than that in the same period last year and 10.7 percent higher than that in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The robust recovery of the aviation market in 2024 has been largely driven by domestic routes, which logged about 640 million passenger trips, representing a 13-percent increase year on year and a 14-percent increase compared to the same period in 2019, according to the CAAC.

"This year, domestic trunk airports have steadily expanded their backbone network, while feeder airports have also further expanded their basic network as part of their efforts to improve services that rely on local tourism resources. Some regions, such as Xinjiang, Yunnan and Inner Mongolia, have connected themselves to both trunk lines and feeder lines to forge new business forms integrating civil aviation and tourism, leading to the vigorous development of the domestic market," said Zhong Shan, chief economist of the Institute of Air Transport at China Academy of Civil Aviation Science and Technology.

International routes also showed remarkable growth with more than 60 million passenger trips, reflecting a year-on-year surge of over 130 percent and reaching around 88 percent of the pre-pandemic level in 2019, as global travel restrictions eased and demand rebounded, the CAAC noted.

Monthly data have remained at over 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels for five consecutive months since July this year, the administration added.

What worth noting is that air passenger transport reached new heights during travel rushes such as the Spring Festival and summer vacation season, with the daily average number of passenger trips reaching 2.1 million and 2.29 million, respectively.

The single-day peak passenger volume is at 2.45 million this year, an increase of 9.8 percent compared to the highest daily figure last year, according to the CAAC.

China's air passenger transport hits record high in 2024