China is looking to increase the user of clean energy in the country. To this end, Shanghai Electric Group Co Ltd. has signed a deal with BrightSource Energy, a California-based company, to build a solar farm.

The collaboration will lead to the construction of a 135-megawatt pilot project in Qinghai province in northwest China.

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The solar thermal project called Delingha will feature six towers. Each tower will have the capacity to generate 135 megawatts, with 3.5 hours of thermal energy storage. During the first stage of construction, two towers will be erected to power 452,000 homes. The project is expected to be operational in 2017.

The new project will replace conventional solar panel technology with mirror technology. Under this technology, thousands of mirrors are used to generate power by concentrating sunlight on a water-filled boiler placed on the top of a tower. The steam generated is used for moving a turbine, which in turn generates electricity. The conventional solar panels use semiconductors to convert sunlight directly into electricity.

China is currently bullish on solar power. The country plans to generate 10 gigawatts of solar energy by 2020.

The Delingha power project is one of seven US-China clean energy initiatives. Earlier this month, National Energy Administration (NEA) announced a list of 20 projects to be completed by the end of 2018. The projects are located throughout China including Hebei, Gansu and Inner Mongolia region.  These solar thermal projects are expected to have a combined capacity of 1,349 MW.

Tagssolar power, BrightSource Energy, Delingha