The largest solar power plant in Taiwan has reached another milestone. On June 30, the ground-mounted 181MW PV plant at Qigu District in Tainan City  was connected to the national power grid,contributing to power supply this summer. The capacity of the PV plant will be expanded to 216MW, which is expected to annually produce 300 million kWh of electricity, equaling to more than the electricity used by 83,000 homes every year.

Identifying a non-arable land with an area of 189 hectares at Qigu District in Tainan, Taiwan Sugar Corporation decided to develop a solar power system on it. The company indicates that the land, known as the Qigu PV Special Area, is subject to soil salinization caused by land subsidence. The land has a poor sugarcane harvest and is not suitable for other crops, either. Therefore, Taiwan Sugar transformed the land into a PV special area. In 2019, Chung-Hsin Electric and Machinery Manufacturing won the bid for the PV plant project to establish a solar power system on the special area. This project is also Taiwan Sugar’s first completed PV project for non-arable lands.

Following various procedures including the application for a land change as well as electricity enterprise establishment and construction permits, the PV plant successfully initiated a grid-connected system for power generation, of which the capacity totals 181MW. Another 35MW will be added to the system by the end of this year, enabling the plant to then generate electricity of 300 million kWh for the power grid in Taiwan, an equivalent of the annual electricity use of more than 83,000 homes.

The Qigu PV Special Area is currently the largest ground-mounted solar power plant in Taiwan, which helps the island reduce 150,000 tons of CO²emissions per year (equaling to the effect of 15,000 hectares of afforestation). Taiwan Sugar said that because summer is the peak season of electricity consumption in Taiwan, connecting the Qigu PV plant to the power grid will ensure stable power supply.

The other ground-mounted PV plant that was built earlier is the solar plant built by Taipower at a salt pond stretching from Jiangjun District to Qigu District in Tainan. With an area of 214 hectares, the previously abandoned land is now installed with 480,000 solar panels, creating a solar power system with capacity of 150 MW. Connected to the national power grid on September 14, 2020, the plant reported 100 million kWh of electricity generation on February 12 this year.

(Source of first image: Taiwan Sugar Corporation)