Nine parts panels, one part heat<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Most of that capacity comes from 900 megawatts of ordinary photovoltaic panels. They turn sunlight straight into electricity. The other 100 megawatts belong to a concentrated solar power plant, which gathers heat with mirrors and makes electricity later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Hami city government report from April 2026<\/a> calls this 9-to-1 split the heart of the project. The aim is to smooth the stop-and-start output of wind and solar farms. Total investment is about 3.6 billion yuan, roughly half a billion dollars, on some 1,817 hectares (about 4,490 acres).<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to State Grid data cited in that report, Hami had more than 50 gigawatts of grid-connected capacity at the end of March. Renewables made up over 38 gigawatts, or 74.33 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thermal section has about 260,000 high-precision tracking mirrors, CTG said in its Chinese-language announcement<\/a> of July 9. Together they cover 800,000 square meters (about 8.6 million square feet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n America’s Department of Energy explains<\/a> how linear Fresnel systems work. Flat or slightly curved mirrors sit on trackers on the ground. They reflect sunlight onto a receiver tube fixed above the rows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Hami, the salt runs through 46 collector loops. Huang Longfei is project manager for the solar thermal plant at the Northwest Electric Power Design Institute, part of China Power Engineering Consulting Group. He described the circuit in a September 2025 account from the Hami city government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We heat it to 550 degrees, and it becomes hot molten salt and goes into the hot salt tank,” he said, in a translation from the Chinese. That is about 1,022 degrees Fahrenheit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the hot tank, the salt flows to the main plant building. There it makes high-pressure steam that spins a turbine, Huang said. CTG’s English update puts it this way: “At night or on cloudy days, when PV output declines, molten salt releases the stored heat to support stable power generation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because the tanks hold heat rather than electricity, this half of the system uses no lithium-ion batteries. The turbine first spun up on September 12, 2025, reaching its rated 3,000 revolutions per minute. Grid tests followed in April 2026, the city government reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CTG sized the storage to run the 100-megawatt thermal unit for eight hours. At full output, one full charge of hot salt would give about 800,000 kilowatt-hours. Losses in pumps, pipes and the turbine would trim that in daily use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It does not mean the whole 1-gigawatt complex runs at full power all night. Output after dark depends on the heat collected that day, on which equipment is working, and on grid demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Solar thermal storage, with its unique advantages of large capacity and zero emissions, can achieve 8 hours of stable storage and generation,” said Niu Jianle. He heads the Hami project for the CTG subsidiary China Three Gorges Renewables. In the July announcement, he called the grid connection a key step in taking linear Fresnel technology from the lab to large-scale use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The April report lists 1,450 equivalent full-load hours a year for the thermal plant and 1,778 for the panels. On paper, the salt-fed turbine would run about 1,450 full-power hours of the year’s 8,760.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spanish engineering firm Sener says its Gemasolar plant can run for up to 15 hours without sunlight on heat stored in molten salt. That plant is a 19.9-megawatt tower design. California’s Ivanpah mirror field<\/a>, by contrast, was built without salt storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Heat is also being tested as storage in other industries, such as a thermal battery at a Kansas ethanol plant<\/a>. Hami’s twist is the mix, with 900 megawatts of panels for the daytime and a salt-fed turbine for evenings and gray days. CTG itself calls it China’s largest linear Fresnel project, not the world’s first solar plant that works at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In September 2025, Wang Haixia gave the Hami city government a lower figure. She is chief design engineer for the project’s solar thermal part, and she put supply at 1.86 billion kilowatt-hours a year, “the annual electricity consumption of about 3 million people.” CTG now says 2.067 billion and does not explain the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both totals lump the panels and the thermal unit together, so they say nothing about power after dark. CTG has not published measured output, running costs or a price per kilowatt-hour, all needed to compare it with batteries, including newer sodium battery designs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CTG’s July announcement admits China had few reference cases for this kind of start-up. Mirror tracking, salt heat exchange and grid controls were tightly linked, with no tested playbook. The Hami team says it will write standard operating manuals for later projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The official project update was published on the China Three Gorges Corporation website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo: China Three Gorges Corporation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" China Three Gorges Corporation started commercial trial operation of a 1-gigawatt solar complex in Hami, Xinjiang, on July 7, 2026. … <\/p>\n260,000 mirrors and 46 loops<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Rows](\"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/linear-fresnel-mirror-rows-hami.jpg\")
Steam after the sun sets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What eight hours adds up to<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gemasolar’s 15 hours in Spain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Mirror](\"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/hami-collector-field-power-line.jpg\")
Two output forecasts, no full year<\/h2>\n\n\n\n