Germany-based Voith has announced that the first of the three Francis turbine-generators, with an installed capacity of 784MW, has been powered at Xiluodu hydropower plant in China.

All the three Francis turbine-generators weigh 1,350 tons, and have an air-cooled generator with a rated capacity of around 855.6MVA, a generator rotor with a diameter of 13.7 and a height of four meters.

Voith Hydro Management Board chairman Roland Münch said the commissioning of the first turbine generator is a milestone towards the first one-gigawatt unit.

Münch said Voith, without any errors, met the high test standard in China and also stated that the machines are running with precision.

The Xiluodu hydropower plant will have an anticipated generation capacity of around 13.86MW when it is completely operational. There will be 18 machine units in the plant.

The hydropower project is expected to generate clean electricity, by cutting down 150 million tons of CO2, 480,000 tons of nitrogen dioxide and 850,000 tons of sulphur dioxide per year.