Southwest China's Sichuan Province became the first Chinese province to surpass the 100-million-kilowatt mark in its installed hydropower capacity on Friday, as the final generating unit of the Yinjiang Hydropower Station in Sichuan's Panzhihua City was connected to the power grid.
Located on the Jinsha River, the Yinjiang Hydropower Station has a total installed capacity of 390,000 kilowatts, with six generating units each contributing 65,000 kilowatts.
The station began its construction six years ago. Once fully operational, it will be capable of delivering over 1.6 billion kilowatt-hours of clean energy annually, equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 1.3 million tons.
Yinjiang is the lowermost downstream facility among the "one reservoir and 10 hydropower stations" that China plans to build in the middle reaches of the Jinsha River.
With ecological sustainability in mind, the hydropower station has built a fishway to provide a route for migratory fish and other aquatic organisms.
Sichuan's installed hydropower capacity now accounts for 70 percent of the province's total power capacity and about one-fourth of the country's total hydropower capacity.
The 100-million-kilowatt hydropower capacity enables the province to deliver 470 billion kilowatt-hours of clean energy annually to meet the demands of 190 million families, equivalent to saving 140 million tons of standard coal, and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 350 million tons.
As a key hub in China's west-to-east power transmission program, Sichuan supplies about one-third of its generated electricity annually to central and eastern regions.
Since 1998, when outbound transmission began, Sichuan has delivered over 1.9 trillion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity to central and eastern China, among other regions -- enough to cover the total electricity consumption of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces combined for a year, according to State Grid Sichuan Electric Power Company.
China's Sichuan breaks 100 mln-kw mark in hydropower installed capacity
