People Who Grow Electricity

In the spring of 2019, Chen He, director of the Hechuan Provincial Development and Reform Commission, personally sentenced his project to death. The 30,000-word evaluation report proves that building a photovoltaic power station in Dingyuan, Longbei is a business destined to lose money. But his boss shattered the report in front of him: "Because you are right, you must go." Four hundred kilometers away, there is a dry loess plateau. The average annual evaporation is six times that of precipitation, and the sound of the wind blowing through the drying field is like the sigh of the earth. Chen He wants to "plant" electricity here - not to build a power station, but to let electricity take root in this land that cannot grow good crops. Ye Zhenzhen, a doctor of materials science who returned from Germany, fights against wind and sand in the laboratory. Her nano-coating cracked under the fifty-degree temperature difference, just like a delicate suit that cannot withstand rough labor. A Liang, a local young man who put down the auto repair wrench, found a "homemade method" with a homemade knurled wheel: the bottom layer must be rough, the topcoat must be firm, and people must be rough to survive here. Use charcoal and salt for grounding, and say goodbye to crops on fifty acres of land. At the bidding meeting, suppliers slapped the table: "In Dingyuan, it would be great if it can be built according to national standards!" The sudden outbreak of the epidemic broke the supply chain and imported parts were stranded at the port. When his father was critically ill, he held Chen He's hand and said, "Use the compensation to plant trees in Dingyuan." This is not about building a power station, but about learning a new "planting science". Between the data and the soil, between the blueprint and the wind and sand, between the father's tree and the son's electricity, find the depth for light to take root. When the photovoltaic matrix finally covered the northern plateau, and salt-tolerant alkali grass grew under the azure blue panels, Chen He understood: The best technology is to make the land feel that the electricity is growing from itself.