China has taken another step towards its stated goal of being the world’s leader in renewable energy production by announcing the completion of the world’s largest floating solar power plant. Although China has long been one of the world’s biggest polluters through its incessant burning of dirty coal to power its factories, this project truly gives us hope for the future.

Floating solar power plants address a number of issues that are raised when trying to collect energy from solar rays. For a start, floating solar plants don’t take up space that could be used for other purposes. On top of this, the panels can slow the rate that water evaporates and another great benefit is the fact that the cooler temperatures on the surface of the water can help cool the solar panels. It might sound counter-intuitive but when solar powers are over-heated, their efficiency suffers.

The truly great thing about China’s new power station, which is located in the city of Huainan in the Anhui province, is that it is floating on top of an old Coal Mine that has been filled in with water. If ever you were looking for a symbol of renewable energy triumphing over fossilized fuel, this is it.

The plant is a 40- megawatt facility, which means that when working at full capacity it’ll be able to provide power to about 32,000 homes. It isn’t the first floating solar power plant with countries like Japan, South Korea, UK, US and India boasting their own but it is by far the largest.

Although the world is still getting warmer, the price of solar energy has been dropping for years now. With prices dropping and ingenious ideas ,like floating solar plants, cropping up all the time we may just be able to get ourselves out of this very manmade crisis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yj31YCa3Xw

Via: Digital Trends