China and Pakistan are building the worldu2019s largest solar farm in the Punjabi desert

Pakistan and China are on their way to building the world’s largest solar farm, with the completion of a 100 Megawatt, 400,000-panel pilot power project, the first solar power plant ever built in Pakistan. Spread out over almost 500 acres of flat land in the Punjabi desert and known as the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park (QUASP), the $130 million project took just three months for Chinese company, Xinjian Sunoasis to build. And it is just the first part of a larger project, the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. According to Chinadialogue, when the project is complete in 2017, the same site could see a total of 5.2 million photovoltaic cells producing up to 1,000 Megawatts of electricity – or enough to power 

about 320,000 homes.
The 100 MW plant is the pilot stage of a more ambitious plan to build the world’s largest solar farm. Once complete in 2017, the site could have capacity of 5.2 million PV cells producing as much as 1,000 MW of electricity – equivalent to an average sized coal-fired power station – and enough to power about 320,000 households. Construction of the next stage is already underway, led by another Chinese company, Zonergy.Eighteen months ago, the site was nothing more than wilderness. Now a mini city has emerged in the middle of the desert, with over 2,000 workers accompanied by heavy machinery, power transmission lines, blocks of buildings, water pipes and pylons