The world's highest-altitude trough-type solar thermal power plant begins construction

Securities Times reporter Kang Yin

On April 6, the China General Nuclear (CGN) Tibet Dangxiong Uma Tang 50-megawatt solar-thermal project—the trough solar-thermal power station with the highest global elevation—was officially started for construction in Uma Tang Township, Dangxiong County, Lhasa. The site is at an altitude of 4,550 meters. The project also achieves the first commercial application of China’s fully independently developed 8.6-meter wide-aperture trough solar collector, and is equipped with a 6-hour molten-salt thermal energy storage system, enabling continuous power generation at night and flexible peak shaving, providing stable and reliable clean power support for the Tibet power grid.

The project is invested in and developed by China General Nuclear New Energy (Dangxiong) Co., Ltd. China Power Construction Group Northwest Survey, Design & Research Institute Co., Ltd. is responsible for EPC general contracting, and Gansu Huayan Engineering Management Consulting Co., Ltd. is responsible for construction supervision. The project adopts heat-transfer-oil trough solar-thermal technology. The collector mirror field covers 242,000 square meters and has a total of 68 loops. Among them, 8 loops use CGN’s independently developed 8.6-meter wide-aperture trough solar collectors, while the remaining 60 loops use collectors with an aperture width of 5.77 meters.

Meifang Quan, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Director of the Energy Bureau of the Tibet Autonomous Region, said that solar-thermal power generation has the potential to be used in Tibet as a peak-shaving resource and as a basic power source. Accelerating the construction of solar-thermal power projects can effectively enhance the local power system’s ability to provide regulating support. He hopes that CGN and all participating units will anchor on the goal of ensuring power supply, organize and manage carefully, and strive to achieve grid-connected power generation as early as possible, making a positive contribution to ensuring energy supply in Tibet.

“An 8.6-meter wide-aperture trough solar collector is currently the trough solar collector with the largest aperture size among commercially used international applications.” Hu Guangyao, Party Secretary and Chairman of China General Nuclear New Energy Holding Co., Ltd., introduced the technology. The commercial application of this technology will effectively drive coordinated upgrades across China’s entire trough solar-thermal power generation industrial chain, further consolidate China’s domestic manufacturing capabilities in key materials and core components, and marks a leap for China’s trough solar-thermal power generation core equipment—from technology introduction to independent innovation.

Yin Hang, Chief Expert of the CGN model (solar-thermal power generation technology), said that the team innovatively developed engineering integration technology for the wide-aperture trough solar collector system. Through special designs such as optimized high-precision tracking control and adaptation of high-altitude structures to withstand wind and cold, the team successfully overcame industry technical bottlenecks that affect the long-term stable operation of systems in high-altitude environments. The National Energy Solar Thermal Power Generation Technology R&D Center has relied on this project to set up a research institution in Tibet, which is responsible for tackling hard and critical technical challenges and providing services.

It is understood that the solar-thermal project started this time is a core component of CGN Tibet Dangxiong Uma Tang’s integrated “solar-thermal + photovoltaic” project. The integrated project includes 50 megawatts of solar-thermal power generation and 400 megawatts of photovoltaic power generation, and is planned to be fully commissioned in 2027. Among them, the photovoltaic power project started construction in September 2025 and uses a “pasture-solar complementarity” model to achieve coordinated development of photovoltaic power generation and ecological pastoral operations. The 6-hour molten-salt thermal energy storage system and a 20-megawatt electric molten-salt heater equipped in the solar-thermal project can absorb discarded electricity from the photovoltaic side. This effectively makes up for the intermittency and volatility of photovoltaic power generation and meets the local power grid’s demand for peak evening load during periods of both abundant and scarce power. According to calculations, after the integrated project is fully completed, the expected average annual electricity generated and fed into the grid is about 719 million kilowatt-hours. It is also expected to equivalently save about 2.169 million metric tons of standard coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 6.523 million metric tons.