Adani Power and Druk sign agreement to build 770 MW hydroelectric power plant in Bhutan

The Minister of Investment, Industry and Trade of Uzbekistan, Laziz Kudratov, met with Katsura Miyazaki, Senior Vice President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), on October 5.

During the meeting, the parties reviewed the current state and prospects of bilateral cooperation, as well as discussed the implementation of existing joint projects and the preparation of new initiatives.

Particular attention was paid to the development of free economic zones (FEZs). The participants highly appreciated JICA's technical assistance in developing master plans for FEZs and creating conditions for attracting foreign investment, including investments from Japanese companies.

Following the negotiations, the parties signed a new Partnership Program for the period from 2026 to 2030. This document provides for the implementation of fifteen promising projects covering transport and energy infrastructure, human capital development, healthcare, and agriculture.

POWERCHINA has connected its gigawatt complex to the power grid, which includes photovoltaic generation and a solar thermal plant using molten salt, located in Qinghai province. This was reported by the state media agency CCTV on October 1. This project is the first clean energy project of this scale in China, combining photovoltaic production, solar thermal energy storage, and electricity-to-heat conversion.

The facility is situated in Gunhe County, within the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai Province. It integrates a 900-megawatt photovoltaic station and a 100-megawatt molten salt solar thermal plant. According to The Paper, the solar thermal component utilizes 10,310 pentagonal heliostats with a total reflective area of about 500,000 square meters around a 219-meter high receiver tower, while the photovoltaic section employs approximately 1.9 million modules.

This project is part of China's second batch of large-scale wind and solar bases. During the day, the heliostats focus sunlight onto the receiver, heating the molten salt, which is then stored. When energy is required, the hot salt heats water into high-temperature, high-pressure steam, which drives a turbine. This allows the station to shift daytime solar energy to evening hours and cloudy periods, transforming renewable sources from weather dependency to demand-matching generation.

Most of the generated electricity will be sent to Henan Province via an extra-high voltage direct current line rated at plus-minus 800 kilovolts, connecting Qinghai and Henan. Upon commissioning, the project is expected to supply an average of about 2.2 billion kWh annually to the grid, which will save approximately 690,000 tons of standard coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 2.07 million tons, according to CCTV.

The investment and operation of the project are carried out by POWERCHINA's new energy division, with POWERCHINA Northwest Engineering Corporation serving as the engineering, procurement, and construction contractor. Local meadows where sheep can graze have been preserved around the photovoltaic arrays. With the launch of the project, the Talatan area in Gunhe has become home to China's first three-tower solar thermal base, consisting of about 63,000 large mirrors forming three circular arrays of heliostats arranged in a triangle.

Solar thermal plants serve as peak power and long-term energy storage facilities. As of the end of August 2026, China had 2.2 GW of operational solar thermal capacity, with another 3.1 GW under construction, representing the largest cumulative figure globally. Furthermore, Qinghai possesses 710 MW of operating and 1.35 GW of under-construction solar thermal capacity, and national policy aims to reach 15 GW of solar thermal capacity by 2030.