Why is the world’s largest solar park Talatan on the Tibetan plateau?

Talatan solar park in Gonghi, China, seen March 2026 by Sentinel-2 / Copernicus Browser.

This post is part of the “Why here?” infrastructure series, where we explore why critical infrastructure sits where it does.

China is the world’s largest producer of renewable energy. It has both the need and excellent geography for it.

Today, we take a look at the world's largest solar park, Talatan, and explain its location on the Tibetan high plateau, with the Orbital Vantage focus on geography from an orbital perspective.

1. Context: Don’t underestimate China’s green trajectory

I avoid getting beyond Earth Observation, but when the data challenges the prevailing narrative related to the day’s topic, I’ll do it. This chapter is not required for the location analysis so feel free to skip to Chapter 2.

China often receives criticism for its emissions and heavy reliance on coal. In the EU common grassroots sentiment is: “Why should we cut emissions when China isn’t?”

The headline data below partly supports this view. On a per capita basis, China’s CO₂ emissions are higher than the EU's by roughly ~30%, though still well below the United States. The trend is also upward, which raises valid concerns.

But that picture misses something important. Over the past decades, a significant share of energy-intensive industrial production has shifted from Europe and the US to China. In effect, emissions have been outsourced rather than cut.

When emissions are adjusted for consumption (import/export effects), the gap narrows significantly, bringing China closer to EU/UK levels on a per capita basis, though the latter are headed down and rightly deserve their statuses as sustainability world leaders.

It would be wrong to say that climate is China’s top short-term priority - neither is it EU’s -  but like most, China sees the advantages of clean, renewable energy. They need increasingly more energy and renewables are typically by far the cheapest energy source over its lifecycle. Lastly, air pollution from coal burning is a major health and reputational issue for China.

As a result, China produces roughly a third of its total electricity with renewables. It does not come as a surprise that most of the world’s largest solar power plants are found there.

2. The Talatan Solar Park in brief

Let’s move from global emissions context to the physical reality on the ground.

Below is an image of the Talatan Solar Park this week. It’s big. Spanning 50km in diameter and covering over 600km2 depending a bit on how it’s measured. For comparison, think of the English Channel that is just 30km at its narrowest. Copernicus satellite imagery shows that in 2012 it was still an empty desert.

Talatan solar park in Gonghi, March 2026 China. Pay attention to the Longyang reservoir lake - it is important for later.

One of the problems with growing infrastructure projects, especially in China, is that finding the “latest status” can be difficult. With satellites we can easily verify what was sitting in the desert yesterday. We could easily go deeper and make a cose-enough estimate of installed capacity, but will leave that exercise for later.

The installed capacity is 21GW as of early 2026, as reported by Hainan prefecture media. That is the equivalent of 10 large nuclear power plants, thousands of wind turbines or better yet, the peak electricity power demand for the entire Netherlands.

You’d think a solar park the size of Barbados would light up clearly in SAR (radar satellite view) but no. For the below image I had to crank up the gain so much that badly shorn sheep now probably light up like a medium-sized radio antenna.

Talatan solar park in Gonghi, China seen with SAR.

The reason is simple. Solar panels are designed to absorb electromagnetic energy, not reflect it back. Second, SAR excels in detecting surface roughness and scatter. Solar panels have smooth surfaces that are tilted, so reflections are uniform and likely angled away from the satellite.

3. The needs of a massive solar park

I recently spent some time analysing how China’s rivers influence the locations of the largest container ports. I initially thought rivers play no role here, but analysing Talatan I understood the Yellow river had a major role.

Orbital Vantage ideal geographic requirements for solar parks go as follows:

• Vast, flat space to build

• High solar irradiation

• High-power grid connection

In practice, electricity market dynamics, tax incentives, politics and regulatory hurdles play a role but mercifully we can’t see those from orbit.

Space to build

Talatan is the size of Paris, so you need a Paris-sized piece of flat, unbuilt land. In China, that is not a problem. Below is the elevation profile of China showing Talatan’s location on the northeast corner of the Tibetan plateau.

Elevation profile showing the Tibetan plateau in white shades.

Eastern China is built-up, but west in Takleman desert or north in Gobi close to Mongolia there is even more flat space, but this doesn’t yet make me ask “why not build there”.

Solar irradiation

From a physical stand-point, this is the most important one for solar parks. It’s the equivalent of wind farms needing wind. There are three variables that determine how much solar energy reaches the ground: Latitude, elevation and cloud cover.

One can profitably produce solar energy at surprisingly high latitudes like Finland, but latitudes closest to the equator have the highest potential. Talatan is at 36 degrees North, same as California and the Mediterranean. 

Altitude helps as there is less atmosphere to filter solar energy. Talatan is at 3000 meters, where there is roughly a third less atmospheric “mass” compared to sea level. 

Cloud cover role needs no explanation, but below is the map of average annual cloud cover over China. Darker areas mean prevailing clear skies. As we can see, Talatan is under skies that have ~40% cloud cover, but there would be even clearer skies up north towards Mongolia. This is the first time I thought why not build there.

Annual cloud cover map of 2010-2025 showing cloudy areas in white, clear skies in darker shades.

The above factors are considered in various “solar irradiation” datasets. Below is data from SolarAtlas. We can see the elevated Tibetan plateau in red due to its elevation, but also the lower and northern Mongolia in similar red due to less cloud cover. 

This reinforces the question: Why was Talatan not built to Gobi desert closer to Mongolia, where the irradiation is actually a little bit higher and the terrain is flatter? Because solar potential alone does not explain Talatan’s location

Solar irradiation map adjusted for specific photovoltaic power output. Red means high solar potential.

High-power grid connection

I once advised a large industrial manufacturer in Europe regarding their location strategy. By far the most constraining requirement was high-power grid connection. By overlaying China’s electricity grid on the previous solar irradiation map, we get the below view.

China electricity grid overlaid on solar irradiation map. Dark black lines are large 550kV connections.

There are two major power lines going to Talatan and nothing in the “why not here?” Gobi desert. In an ideal world, solar panels would be in orbit or the moon, if we only figured out an effective way to transmit the power down to Earth.

Here is where the Yellow River finally explains the location of Talatan: The Longyang hydroelectric power station has been there for decades and offered an easy way to plug the solar park in. I was so certain of this conclusion that I almost didn’t go verify it, but having presented (not-so) certain conclusions to discerning clients in the past, I’ve learnt it pays to check it out. On the way I learnt the hydropower production is automatically regulated based on what is coming from the solar park, to deliver a stable supply to the grid.

The grid and hydropower regulation finally fully explain why Talatan was built where it was, but it doesn’t mean other locations are not already online or under development.

4. Future locations

The future for solar parks is sunny. Heh. China needs more power and there is ample solar potential. While some of the optimal areas currently lack a grid connection, that will not hold developers back.

The Baker Institute has published a superb China infrastructure map, which outlines several large-scale developments falling neatly into the earlier marked “why not here” area. See below the map in action, with solar and wind projects in orange and purple, respectively. The data is from October 2024, when the Talatan bubble was still small.

China solar and wind power capacity and project pipeline map from October 2024 by the Baker Institute.

Conclusion

Again, geography from orbital perspective goes a long way in explaining the infrastructure location. But case Talatan shows it was not solar potential alone that defined Talatan as the winning location, but the existing grid connection and nearby hydopower plant.

Talatan is for now the largest plant in the world, but as China pushes for more energy it will soon be matched by various other parks taking advantage of the country’s vast solar potential.

See you,
Orbital Vantage