China helps Pakistan build world’s largest solar farm

Some 400,000 solar panels, spread over 200 hectares of flat desert, glare defiantly at the sun at what is known as the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park (QASP) in Punjab, named after Pakistan’s founding father. The 100 MW photovoltaic (PV) solar farm was built by Chinese company Xinjiang SunOasis in just three months, at a cost of around US$131 million and started selling electricity to the national grid in August. This is the first energy project under the US$46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a key part of China’s ‘new silk roads’, linking the port at Gwadar in southern Pakistan with Kashgar in China’s western region of Xinjiang. Read more