Once the cradle of industry and today’s “world outlet”. It is one of the three major sea areas in the world, where the wind is strong, the waves are high, the water is deep, and the current is fast. There are more than 200 days of strong winds above level 7 every year.
The villages by the sea here are covered with stone houses, and there are neatly arranged stones on the roof. It is said that the maximum wave height is about 9.69 meters,
and it is also known as the “Bridge Construction Forbidden Zone”.
But did you know that on the northwestern border of my country, at the bottom of the valley between the Qilian Mountains and Mazong Mountain,
there is also a “world outlet”? The long wind blows out the vast Gobi and the city’s new life. It is Yumenguan.
1. Gansu, the birthplace of China’s oil industry, known as the “world outlet”, is also the cradle of wind power
The wind and sand are boundless at Yumen Pass. Next to an ancient beacon tower in Shisilijingzi, Yumen Town,
four 300-kilowatt wind turbines made in Denmark have been spinning against the wind for 14 years. The local people affectionately call them “Four Little Swans”.
The limited liability company’s pioneering work in Gansu marks that the construction of wind farms in Gansu has officially entered the experimental demonstration stage and opened the curtain of the Jiuquan 10-million-kilowatt wind power base.
Yumen is rich in wind and photovoltaic resources and has become the largest wind power base in Gansu and the fifth largest wind power base in China. If the “scenery” industry wants to develop,
it needs to go out of Yumen and Gansu and transport to the eastern region,
but many People don’t know that in 2016, the “abandoned wind rate” in Gansu Province reached 43%,
the highest in the country, and the “abandoned light rate” reached 30%. Subsequently, Gansu Province slowed down the construction of new energy projects,
increased domestic consumption and power transmission, and the curtailed wind and solar curtailment rates decreased accordingly,
which still cannot be completely resolved.
In 1996, when exploring the transformation of oil and gas resources, Yumen started to build the first demonstration wind farm in Gansu Province.
After 25 years of development, Yumen’s wind turbines have finally grown from the initial 300 kW, 600 kW, and 750 kW to the current 3 MW,
becoming a veritable “wind turbine expo park”. In 2020, Yumen’s wind power generation will reach 4.597 billion kWh,
making it an important wind power industry base in China. Income, enterprises, population…
everything that was lost due to the failure of traditional energy sources is gradually returning due to the prosperity of new energy sources.
“World outlet” also comes from this.
2. China’s new energy capital in the Future
At the beginning of 2021, at the China New Energy Industry Economic Development Annual Conference held in Hunan,
Yumen City was awarded the title of “China’s New Energy Capital”, and it is also the only county-level city in Gansu that was shortlisted for the top 100 counties and cities in Western China.
Go west along National Highway 312 and enter Yumenguan. On the flat Gobi desert, rows of neat photovoltaic power generation panels are particularly spectacular. The blue polysilicon modules glisten under the sunlight, like a blue ocean.
On the land of the Gobi, the total annual average sunshine time here is 3362 hours, the sunshine rate is 75%,
and the total annual radiation is 6482.57 megajoules per square meter. With a large area, flat and open terrain,
and no obstacles, it is one of the areas with the highest total solar radiation in Gansu Province,
and it is also an ideal area for building solar photovoltaic power plants.
With the construction of a 200MW photovoltaic grid-connected power generation demonstration project and the first centralized photovoltaic power generation demonstration project,
Yumen plans to build a 10,000-kilowatt wind power base, promote a million-kilowatt photovoltaic parity base,
a million-kilowatt solar thermal base, and construct a one-million-kilowatt peak-shaving power supply base, etc.,
will completely “revitalize” Yumen with the help of the potential of new energy development.