From "Gobi Desert Sandbar" to "National Base"—An Observation of the Economic Development in Qinghai County Area: Gonghe Chapter

Ask AI · How can photovoltaic sheep achieve a win-win for both ecology and people’s livelihoods?

The Hainan Prefecture Photovoltaic and Energy Storage Integrated Demonstration Base of the Yellow River Company of State Power Investment Corporation. Photo by reporters Cheng Huanning and Wang Feifei

Herder Sonam Cailang’s flock forages beneath the photovoltaic panels.

Inside the meteorological station at the Guoneng Gonghe Photovoltaic Power Plant, staff carry out patrol inspections.

In the Talar Desert of Gonghe County, Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, the average annual sunshine duration exceeds 3,000 hours. This stretch of Gobi desert and sandy wasteland is now covered by continuous photovoltaic panels, forming a vast blue “ocean.” When the sunlight falls again, it is no longer only a natural gift of light and heat—it is “captured” by blocks of photovoltaic panels and turned into a continuous stream of energy surging on the plateau.

What kind of wealth does this beam of light bring to this land? The answer is not a single one.

In recent years, based on its resource endowments, Gonghe County has focused on green transformation. Using industrial parks as the carrier, industry as the engine, and integration as the path, it has incorporated clean energy development into its five-year plan, and planned and built a green industrial development park with a total area of 4,628.5 square kilometers to a high standard. A single beam of light links an entire industrial chain—from equipment manufacturing to power generation, from industrial integration to livelihood protection—becoming a “green engine” driving county-level economic development. It also provides replicable and scalable practice samples for high-quality development of county economies around the lakeside region and even across the entire province.

Sand and Sea Turned into an Oasis—“Green Wealth” Grows on Wasteland

The wind at Talar used to blow away the greenness of the grasslands, but it also created an opportunity for the photovoltaic industry to develop. Here lies one of the photovoltaic power generation parks with the largest installed capacity in the world. But what is truly astonishing is not only the grandeur of this industrial landscape—it is the sheep calmly foraging under the photovoltaic panels, another kind of wealth brought by light: “photovoltaic sheep” achieve a win-win for both the “ecology account” and the “people’s livelihoods account.”

In Gonghe County’s various photovoltaic parks, ecological protection is always the bottom line of development. Enterprises restore degraded grasslands through solid actions, putting green back on them. The photovoltaic ecological pastoral farm of Datang Qinghai Company’s Hainan branch has become a vivid example of ecological restoration.

“We not only generate clean electricity, but also keep the green grasslands. Each year we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 11.4 million tons—this is the ecological return that the photovoltaic industry gives back to the plateau,” said Jiang Peng, head of the Gonghe Photovoltaic Operation and Maintenance Center of Datang Qinghai Energy Development Co., Ltd., Hainan New Energy Division. Today, Datang’s photovoltaic ecological pastoral farm has been built across 1,333.33 hectares in Hainan Prefecture, and in the Gonghe and Xinghai regions the greenery is flourishing, making it a benchmark for ecological governance on the plateau.

Walking through the photovoltaic fields, you can notice that the pile foundations use steel pipe material instead of traditional concrete footings, allowing grass to grow safely under the panels. “During construction, we insist on zero-disturbance construction, protecting the original geology and vegetation to the maximum extent. In summer, the grass under the photovoltaic panels grows lushly, realizing ‘power generation on the panels and greening under them,’” Jiang Peng said.

The grassland under the photovoltaic panels not only restores life, but also becomes a new path for herders to increase income.

At the Datang photovoltaic base, Sonam Cailang, a 53-year-old herder from Qu沟 Village, Shazhu Yu Township, Gonghe County, is herding his flock, which is foraging beneath the panels. Seeing the fat and healthy sheep in front of him, he smiles: “Our family has herded here for generations. When the Longyangxia Power Plant was built in 1981, farmland and grasslands were requisitioned. After we moved to Talar, there was strong wind and sand, and there was little grass. We could at most raise two or three hundred sheep, and only about fifty or sixty survived each year—the days were really tight.”

“Together with local cooperatives and herders, we signed the ‘Photovoltaic Farm Livestock Grazing Agreement.’ Each year, we provide 800 hectares of photovoltaic fields free of charge for grazing. Just this alone brings more than 300,000 yuan in annual income to the village cooperatives,” Jiang Peng said. “Our photovoltaic ecological pastoral farm is built in two phases. The first phase can provide grazing space for 2,000 head of livestock. After the second phase is completed, it can form an annual livestock scale of 5,000 head, driving an industry scale of 10,000 head. This builds a complete photovoltaic sheep industry chain integrating ‘scientific breeding, industrial processing, and market sales.’”

These sheep, which grow by eating the grass under the photovoltaic panels, are affectionately called “photovoltaic sheep” by local people. They are naturally free-range—no fattening feed is fed to them—making them “a great favorite in the market.” “The meat quality of photovoltaic sheep is better than that of ordinary fattening sheep. For one sheep, you can sell it for more than one hundred yuan extra. People come to buy from inside and outside the province, so we don’t worry about sales,” said Sonam Cailang. Now the living conditions at home are getting better and the children have also found stable jobs—these changes are all brought by photovoltaic power.

Today, Talar has 32 photovoltaic ecological pastoral farms and 56 centralized grazing points. It raises more than 20,000 photovoltaic sheep each year and continuously increases income by driving 18 village-level collective economic cooperatives. This beam of light opens a new income-increasing path for herders, and also helps this land achieve a “turning point of fate”—turning desert into oasis, and turning sandy land into pasture.

A Cluster Builds a High Ground—County-Level “Industry and Prosperity”

In the Xishan area of Gonghe County, more than 30 hectares of ecological public welfare forests are thriving. There are 66,000 Qinghai spruces and poplars arranged neatly, forming a green barrier to block wind and sand. In 2024, the public forest project of the China Energy Group’s Qinghai Gonghe branch won the Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s “Golden Key Solution,” becoming a model for desert governance.

If ecological restoration is the gentle gift of the light of photovoltaics, then industrial rise is the hard-core driving momentum that this beam of light injects into Gonghe’s county-level economy.

In the photovoltaic and solar-thermal industrial park of Talar, a heat absorption tower 234 meters high rises straight into the clouds, surrounded by more than 20,000 heliostats. Like sunflowers, these mirrors are controlled by an automated control system: every 30 seconds they automatically calibrate their angles to ensure the maximum use of each ray of sunlight. The principle here is no longer to convert light directly into electricity. Instead, it first turns light into heat and stores it in huge storage tanks. At night, the heat from the molten salt is released to heat water, producing steam and driving steam turbines to generate electricity. This means that even after the sun sets, the light still keeps generating power.

As one of the country’s first batch of large wind and photovoltaic base projects and the China Energy Group’s first tower-type solar-thermal project, this 100,000-kilowatt “artificial sun” started in February 2024 and reached commercial operation in December 2025. In 22 months, it accomplished a plateau campaign against time—paired with wind and sand, and coexisting with innovation.

“After comparing three technical routes—tower, trough, and linear Fresnel—we ultimately chose the tower route. Its core advantages are a high concentration temperature, low heat loss, high system efficiency, a complete and mature industrial chain, and better adaptability to the construction environment in the northwest, making it more suitable,” said Qiao Hongfei, the person in charge of project construction, with unwavering confidence.

In this race against the clock, “Gonghe speed” has been refreshed again and again. The concrete pouring for the main body of the 188-meter-high heat absorption tower reached the top 15 days ahead of schedule; the installation accuracy rate of the 23,340 heliostats met 100%; the main plant reached top-out 30 days ahead of schedule. From excavation of the tower foundation to grid connection and power generation, it took only 22 months. This set a new record for construction duration for projects of the same capacity in the same period.

The layout of the China Energy Group in Gonghe County began years earlier. Ning Junjie, head of the engineering construction department, pointed to a photo of the HeLo 330 kV collecting substation and said: “In December 2022, here it was minus 20 to 30 degrees Celsius. With strong winds above level 8, you couldn’t even stand steadily. We lived in temporary prefab houses, and even with two electric heaters running at night, it was still so cold that we couldn’t sleep. Yet not a single person said it was too tough or backed down.”

It was precisely this steadfastness and hard work that brought the HeLo collecting substation its “100-day energized” results, refreshing the construction speed of similar collecting substations in Qinghai. Gonghe’s 1 million kW photovoltaic projects and Qingyu’s 900,000 kW photovoltaic projects were connected one after another, becoming major milestones for the group’s clean energy installed capacity and new energy installed capacity exceeding 100 million kW.

From “Gobi desert and sandy islets” to “national bases,” Gonghe County has used clean energy as the core engine, achieving both a leap in total economic volume and a leap in development quality. During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, cumulative investment in new energy reached 57.546 billion yuan, and breakthroughs in “Gonghe-made” high-end equipment such as photovoltaic modules and wind turbine tower sections achieved a “zero-to-one” leap.

Smart Upgrades Improve Efficiency—Development Brings “Intellectual Wealth”

In Gonghe County, the scientific and technological content behind this beam of light is becoming increasingly high.

Entering the first and second photovoltaic parks of the 10-million-kilowatt-level new energy base in Hainan Prefecture, you find that these are not only the core positions for Gonghe County’s photovoltaic industry, but also a frontier testing ground for photovoltaic and energy storage technologies in high-altitude areas across China. They inject strong momentum for scientific and technological innovation into Gonghe’s photovoltaic industry and keep this hot plateau land revitalized amid the new wave.

The Hainan Prefecture Photovoltaic and Energy Storage Integrated Demonstration Base of the Yellow River Company of State Power Investment Corporation is located here. There are 16 types of energy storage equipment arranged in an orderly manner, making it the most eye-catching technological coordinate on the plateau. “This photovoltaic and energy storage integrated demonstration base is Hainan Prefecture’s first market-oriented photovoltaic and energy storage integrated project, and it’s unique even in Qinghai!” said Ren Qiangchang, project manager of the New Energy Construction Branch of the Yellow River Company, pointing to the energy storage technology demonstration area, speaking with pride.

The project’s installed capacity is 499.82 MW, with supporting energy storage capacity of 85.63 MW/151.291 MWh. But what truly makes this base different is not the scale—it is its complex internal composition. In the energy storage technology demonstration area, 16 different types of energy storage devices are arranged side by side: aluminum-based wide-temperature-range batteries, semi-solid batteries, solid-state lithium iron phosphate batteries, sodium-ion batteries, supercapacitors, hybrid capacitors, lithium titanate batteries, flywheel energy storage, and other new technologies are all gathered here. This makes unstable solar energy become stable, controllable, and storable—like a giant “power bank.”

The entire base is divided into 4 demonstration and testing zones: the energy storage technology demonstration zone, the photovoltaic-energy storage coupling demonstration zone, the small-scale photovoltaic-energy storage system zone, and the photovoltaic-energy storage system zone. Each zone has its own responsibilities—some focus on energy storage efficiency, some record cycle life, and others study operating characteristics under different voltage levels.

“We aim to put different types and models of energy storage technologies together in this high-altitude area of Gonghe County for comparative testing. We focus on core data such as battery operating status and power generation efficiency, to provide solid experimental evidence for the industry’s subsequent promotion of energy storage technologies,” Ren Qiangchang introduced. Many of the technologies are new models rarely seen in the industry. Every batch of data collection is to ensure that new energy technologies operate more steadily and efficiently on the plateau.

At the core location of the park, sets of photovoltaic-energy storage integrated synchronous generators are especially eye-catching. Ren Qiangchang said: “Conventional energy storage mainly solves the issue of photovoltaic peak-valley consumption. But this set of equipment can also provide auxiliary services to the power grid such as frequency regulation, voltage regulation, and compensation. In high-altitude areas, this is the first attempt. In the past, frequency and voltage regulation relied on phase-shifting transformers, which were purely ‘big power consumers.’ Energy storage equipment can not only achieve the functions of phase-shifting transformers, but also generate electricity and sell power—one initiative with two gains.”

Not far away, the intelligent operation of the Guoneng Gonghe Photovoltaic Power Plant makes plateau photovoltaics even more “tech-styled.” Inside the dedicated meteorological station, data is transmitted in real time, and weather curves generated by large-model algorithms are clearly visible. “This is Gonghe’s unique meteorological station. It can accurately capture key data such as wind speed, visibility, and temperature—far more precise than public meteorological stations—helping us conduct more accurate analysis and judgment of power generation,” said Yin Kui, a member of the Party Committee and deputy general manager of the China Energy Group’s Qinghai Gonghe Branch.

On this land in Gonghe County, a beam of light illuminates the desert of Talar into green, strengthens Gonghe’s industries, and lights the way for science and technology on the plateau. From single photovoltaic power generation to full-chain development of photovoltaic-energy storage integration, Gonghe County not only found a new county-level economic development path of “green leadership, industrial integration, coordinated urban-rural development, and enriching the people to strengthen the county,” but also made this beam of light from the plateau a synonym for ecological wealth, industrial wealth, and intellectual wealth. And this beam of light will continue to shine across Gonghe’s land, illuminating an even farther future. (Reporters Wang Feifei, Qi Wanqiang, Cheng Huanning, Li Xingfa)