As Pakistan’s energy import bill exorbitantly touched $27 billion, prime minister Shehbaz Sharif underlined the need for exploiting indigenous resources including hydel, solar, air and coal to produce cheap electricity. According to Gwadar Pro, he stated that a 1,320MW project was initiated by Shanghai Electric at Thar to use indigenous coal for electricity production. “The plants have been connected to the national grid and it was the fruit of the CPEC initiative,” added Khurram Dastgir Khan, Federal Minister for Power.

Pakistan is suffering the impacts of the greenhouse effect, so green power generation is the trend. PM also reveals that the incumbent government has prepared a plan to generate 10,000 megawatts of electricity through solar energy. “We know that Pakistan is rich in solar and wind resources,” said Wang Haowei from Shanghai Electric, who is the business manager of Zhang Jiakou Green Power Project. Shanghai Electric Group has a global presence in new energy and efficient clean energy industries.

Its Zhang Jiakou Green Power Project is a part of the multi-energy integration and optimization demonstration project. It covers achieved 100% green power supply for all venues of the Beijing Winter Olympics. “The installed capacity of the project is 150 MW wind power, 30 MW photovoltaic power and 10 MW energy storage.” Wang Haowei told us that the project is characterized by the complementarity of various new energy generation systems. “The feature of wind power generation systems is that their output at night is more than that during the day, while photovoltaic power generation systems have output during the day only.

The energy storage system can adjust the volatility in the power generation process of the other two systems.” “Compared with traditional thermal power generation, the project can save 1.48 million tons of standard coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3.69 million tons per year, " he added. Shanghai Electric is also actively cooperating with other Belt and Road countries in power generation system construction, bringing its advanced technology and equipment to more countries. Dubai 700 CSP and 250 MW PV project in Dubai can be a good example.

“This is the largest single-site concentrated solar power plant in the world, the CSP part is 700 MW in total, consisting of 100 MW CT unit and three 200 MW PT units; Photovoltaic 250 MW, which maximizes the site application,” introduced Zhao Hui, project manager of Dubai 700 CSP and 250 MW PV project. Concentrated solar power generation works by using mirrors and heat exchangers to collect the Sun's thermal energy and provide steam, and then generate power from steam with traditional turbo-generators. “ This power generation method not only can be as clean and renewable as photovoltaic power generation, but also has the safety and stability of thermal power generation.” Zhao Hui added.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan-INP