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

Securities Times reporter Kang Yin

On April 6, the trough solar-thermal power plant with the highest global elevation—CGN Tibet Uma-tang 50 MW solar-thermal project—officially started construction in Uma-tang Township, Dangxiong County, Lhasa. The site sits at an altitude of 4,550 meters. The project also achieves for the first time the first commercial application of China’s completely independently owned intellectual property 8.6-meter large-aperture trough solar collector, alongside the configuration of a 6-hour molten-salt thermal energy storage system. This enables 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 and developed by CGN New Energy (Dangxiong) Co., Ltd. China Power Construction Group Northwest Survey, Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd. is responsible for the EPC general contracting, and Gansu Huayan Engineering Management Consulting Co., Ltd. is responsible for construction supervision. The project uses a heat-transfer-oil trough solar-thermal technology. The collector mirror field covers an area of 242k square meters. A total of 68 loops are set up, including 8 loops that use CGN’s independently developed 8.6-meter large-aperture trough solar collectors, while the remaining 60 loops use collectors with a 5.77-meter aperture width.

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

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

Yin Hang, chief model expert (solar-thermal power generation technology) of CGN, said that the team has innovatively developed an engineering integration technology for large-aperture trough solar-thermal collector systems. Through special designs such as high-precision tracking and control optimization, and adaptations of high-altitude structures to resist wind and cold, it successfully overcame industry technical bottlenecks for long-term stable operation of the system in high-altitude environments. The National Energy Solar Thermal Power Generation Technology Research and Development Center has established a Tibet research institution relying on this project, responsible for tackling major and difficult technical issues and providing services.

It is understood that this solar-thermal project that has started construction is a core component of CGN Tibet Dangxiong Uma-tang’s integrated project of “solar-thermal + photovoltaics.” The integrated project includes 50 MW solar-thermal power generation and 400 MW photovoltaic power generation, and is planned to be fully operational in 2027. Among them, the photovoltaic power generation project started construction in September 2025 and uses a “shepherding-for-solar complementarity” model to achieve coordinated development of photovoltaic power generation and ecological livestock farming. The 6-hour molten-salt thermal energy storage system and a 20 MW electric molten-salt heater equipped in the solar-thermal project can absorb photovoltaic curtailed power, effectively compensating for the intermittency and variability of photovoltaic power generation, and meeting local grid peak evening load demand during both wet and dry seasons. Based on calculations, after the integrated project is fully built, the expected annual average grid-connected electricity generation is about 719 million kWh. It is estimated to equivalently save about 216.9k tons of standard coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 652.3k tons.

(Editor: Dong Pingping)

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