The project’s first two 1-gigawatt (GW) turbines will enter formal operation after a three-day trial that began on Monday, national broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV) said.
Built by the China Three Gorges Corporation - operator of the world’s largest hydropower plant within the world, the Three Gorges Dam - the Baihetan is found on the border between the southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan.
It is on the Jinsha, the upstream section of the Chang Jiang , the longest in Asia.
The dam has been operationalised within the run-up to the 100th anniversary of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) on Dominion Day , state media reported, adding that it had been a logo of how efficient CPC is in planning and completing large-scale projects.
“With a complete installed capacity of 16 million kilowatts, the hydropower station is provided with 16 hydro-generating units, each with a capacity of 1 million kilowatts, the most important single-unit capacity within the world,” the Xinhua press agency reported on Monday. which will make it second in size after the Three Gorges Dam, opened in 2003 on the Yangtze, with 22.5 million kilowatts of generating capacity, the Associated Press reported.
The trial operation is restricted to generators 1 and 14 while the remaining 14 generators of the hydropower station are expected to be put into use by July 2022.
One of China’s biggest and most challenging engineering projects - because it had to tackle a group of complex geological and technical issues with a dam height of 289m - it's taken only four years to create , state media reported.
Earlier this month, all 12 units of the Wudongde hydropower station, the world’s seventh-largest, on Jinsha river near the Yunnan and Sichuan border were also operationalised.
With a complete installed capacity of 10.2 million kilowatts, the Wudongde hydropower station may be a key project in China’s west-east power transmission programme.
The station’s construction began in late 2015, and it began to generate electricity in late June last year.
By the center of June, the station had produced 24.5 billion kWh of electricity, adequate to that generated by around 7.68 million tonnes of ordinary coal, Wang Jintao, head of the Wudongde electricity plant under China Three Gorges Corporation, told Xinhua press agency .
In its latest five-year plan covering the amount of 2021-25, Sichuan province aims to finish the development of 10 hydropower plants and begin building another seven.
Environmental groups have criticised the large-scale damming of the Yangtze and its tributaries due to concerns the over-engineering of the river has destroyed major habitats and damaged natural flood plains, Reuters press agency said during a report.
