On June 16, 2026, the CGN Golmud 350 MW CSP Demonstration Project officially commenced construction at the Wutumeiren PV-CSP Park in Golmud City, Qinghai Province. As the CSP plant with the world's largest single-unit thermal storage capacity and the largest solar field area, this project adopts a molten salt tower-trough hybrid technical route. It achieves large-scale application of the globally largest aperture—8.6-meter—molten-salt parabolic trough solar collector and its associated processes, both independently developed by CGN. This will provide a replicable and scalable "CGN solution" for the large-scale development of China's CSP industry.

The total aperture area of the solar field for the CGN Golmud 350 MW CSP Demonstration Project reaches 3.7 million square meters, equivalent to the size of 518 standard football fields, including 3 tower solar fields of 1.1 million square meters each and 1 trough solar field of 400,000 square meters. Among them, the trough solar field entirely adopts the 8.6-meter large-aperture parabolic trough collector independently developed by CGN.

Ding Yeliang, member of the Party Committee and Vice General Manager of the New Energy Holding Company, introduced that this parabolic trough collector technology completed technical verification at the Delingha CSP Test Base on April 21 this year. It achieves a concentration ratio of 107.5 times and can realize stable operation with an inlet temperature of 290 degrees Celsius and an outlet temperature of 550 degrees Celsius. The thermal storage temperature difference of 260 degrees Celsius is 2.6 times that of traditional heat transfer oil systems. The core components of the complete equipment—including the collector support structure, flexible connection assembly, local controller, and support precision and surface-profile inspection device—were all developed through joint efforts by CGN and leading domestic industrial chain enterprises, achieving 100% independent controllability of core technologies.

It is worth mentioning that the project is equipped with a 15-hour large-capacity molten salt thermal storage system with a thermal storage capacity of 11,747 MWh. As the CSP project with the currently largest single-unit thermal storage capacity, it can achieve stable power generation and possesses excellent grid flexible peak-shaving capability, which can effectively improve the new energy absorption efficiency of the Qinghai power grid and the overall power supply guarantee capability. Upon completion, the project is expected to reach an annual power generation of 1 billion kilowatt-hours, equivalent to saving 320,000 tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 860,000 tons, demonstrating significant ecological and environmental benefits.

As a pioneer in the domestic CSP sector, CGN has been proactively developing its CSP business since 2011. Committed to leading industry development through scientific and technological innovation, the company successfully obtained approval to build the National Energy Solar Thermal Power Generation Technology R&D Center, the only state-level R&D platform in China's CSP field. It has successively implemented the Delingha 50 MW CSP Demonstration Project, the Delingha 1 GW Integrated CSP-plus-Thermal-Storage Project, and the Jixi 100 MW Tower CSP Plant, and has commenced construction on the Tibet Wumatang 50 MW CSP Project, the world's highest-altitude trough-type concentrated solar power plant. To date, CGN has completed 19 scientific and technological achievement appraisals, obtained 68 granted patents, and led or participated in the formulation of 30 national and industry standards in the CSP field.