Second Largest Hydropower Station in China Diverts Part of Yangtze River Successfully

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Through 30 hours of nonstop work, the Xiluodu hydropower station, the second largest hydropower station in China, diverted its main river course in southwestern China on November 8, 2007. The station changed the course to make the river water run through five diversion tunnels.

The station, in the Xiluodu Valley between Sichuan Province's Leibo County and Yunnan Province's Yongshan County, on the mainstream of Jinsha River (or the upstream river section of the Yangtze River), is just second in size to the Three Gorges hydropower station in China. The project will have nine 700-megawatt (MW) turbine generating units with a total installed capacity of 12,600 MW in its two underground powerhouses at both banks, as well as a 278-meter-high dam with a total reservoir capacity of 11.6 billion cubic meters corresponding to the normal pool level (NPL) of 600 meters above sea level. Static investment of the project is $6.12 billion (based on the price in August 2001). The project's main function is power generation, but will have benefits in flood control, sediment control and navigation improvement.

The Xiluodu hydropower station is the first project in the downstream cascade development scheme of Jinsha River. Construction on the project began in 2005 and is expected to be completed in 2015, when the project is expected to go online. The project could supply about 57 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to central China and eastern China as part of the country's plan to transmit power from the west to the east, as well as to improve the flood-control capacity of the Yangtze River along with the Three Gorges project.

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