Baihetan hydropower plant units in China are now operational

On Monday, two units of the Baihetan hydropower plant on the Yangtze River in southwest China, which is said to be the world's largest under construction, generated electricity for the first time. According to China Central Television (CCTV), the project's first two 1-gigawatt (GW) turbines will go into formal operation after a three-day trial that began on Monday. The Baihetan is located on the border between the southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan and was built by the China Three Gorges Corporation, which also operates the world's largest hydropower plant, the Three Gorges Dam. It is located on the Jinsha, an upstream section of Asia's longest river, the Yangtze. The dam was completed in time for the ruling Communist Party of China's (CPC) 100th anniversary on July 1, according to state media, and is a symbol of the CPC's efficiency in planning and completing large-scale projects. The hydropower station, which has a total installed capacity of 16 million kilowatts, is equipped with 16 hydro-generating units, each with a capacity of 1 million kilowatts, making it the world's largest single-unit capacity. After the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, which opened in 2003 and has a generating capacity of 22.5 million kilowatts, it will be the world's second-largest dam. The trial operation is limited to generators 1 and 14, with the hydropower station's remaining 14 generators expected to be operational by July 2022. All 12 units of the Wudongde hydropower station, the world's seventh-largest, on the Jinsha River near the Yunnan-Sichuan border, were also turned on earlier this month. The Wudongde hydropower station is a key project in China's west-east power transmission programme, with a total installed capacity of 10.2 million kilowatts. Construction on the station began in late 2015, and it began producing electricity in late June of last year. According to Wang Jintao, head of the Wudongde electricity plant under China Three Gorges Corporation, the station had produced 24.5 billion kWh of electricity by the middle of June, roughly equivalent to 7.68 million tonnes (mt) of standard coal. Sichuan province's latest five-year plan, which runs from 2021 to 2025, aims to finish ten hydropower plants and begin construction on another seven. Environmentalists have criticised the Yangtze and its tributaries' large-scale damming, claiming that the river's over-engineering has destroyed major habitats and harmed natural flood plains. Image Source Also read: Govt proposes to hive off central hydro projects Also read: Bihar set to have 130 MW hydroelectric project over Kosi river