The Baihetan hydropower project is expected to be fully commissioned in July 2022
The Baihetan Hydropower Station is built on the Jinsha River in China. (Credit: China Three Gorges Corporation)
The 16GW Baihetan Hydropower Station, which is being built in Southwest China by China Three Gorges (CTG), has generated its first power.
CTG announced on Twitter that the first batch of generating units of the hydropower project built on the Jinsha River began operations today.
Baihetan is the second largest hydropower project in the world after the 22.5GW Three Gorges Project, which is also located in China and owned by CTG.
When fully commissioned, which is expected in July 2022, the Baihetan Hydropower Station will be able to generate 62.443 billion kWh per year, said CTG. The power generated by the hydropower station will cover the annual electricity requirements of 500,000 people, reported CCTV.
It will offset 65 million tons of CO2 emissions and 600,000 tons of SO2 emissions.
Located on the border of the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, the Baihetan Hydropower Station will have 16 domestically-made turbines, each with a capacity of 1GW.
The Chinese hydropower station is said to support a total storage capacity of 20.6 billion cubic meters and has 10.4 billion cubic meters in regulation storage capacity.
Construction on the hydropower facility had begun in August 2017.
The milestone at the 2.1GW Baihetan Hydropower Station follows last week’s commissioning of the first unit of the Changlongshan pumped storage power station by CTG. Located in Huzhou of East China’s Zhejiang province, the Changlongshan power station has six 350MW pump-turbine generating units.
Earlier this month, CTG announced the full commissioning of the 10.2GW Wudongde Hydropower Station. Built with an investment of CNY120bn ($18.76bn), near the border of Yunnan and Sichuan, the Wudongde Hydropower Station is anticipated to generate 39 billion kWh of electricity per annum.