By Hou Liqiang | CHINA DAILY |
The dam body project of Baihetan hydropower station is
completed on May 31, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]
China has
completed construction of the dam for the Baihetan Hydropower Station, which
will be the world's second-largest in terms of installed capacity, after
working nonstop for 1,510 days and nights and pouring enough concrete to fill
the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt three times over.
Almost 8
million metric tons of concrete was used to finish the dam, which is 289 meters
high, China Three Gorges Corporation, which built it, said in a news release on
Monday.
The
completion of the dam lays a solid foundation for the station's first
generating units to go into operation as scheduled before July 1. It also
signals that the massive project will be able to play its designed role in
controlling floods, the company said.
Located on
the Jinsha River, the upper section of the Yangtze, Baihetan straddles the
southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. Aside from generating
electricity, the station will also help prevent floods, control flows of
sediment and facilitate shipping.
A major
source of power for China's west-to-east power transmission project, the station
is also a key part of the flood control system in the Yangtze.
"It's
a milestone project with epoch-making significance in the history of hydropower
project development," the company said.
With a
total installed capacity of 16 million kilowatts, which comes second only to
that of the Three Gorges Hydropower Station, the new station is expected to
make a great contribution to the country's efforts to see carbon dioxide
emissions peak before 2030 and go carbon neutral before 2060.
Once it is
in full operation in July next year, the daily output of the station is
expected to be sufficient to meet the annual household power consumption of
half a million people. Generating that much power every day over the course of
a year would take almost 20 million tons of standard coal, China Central
Television reported.
China
consumed 4.98 billion tons of standard coal last year, according to the
National Bureau of Statistics.
China Three
Gorges Corporation said Baihetan has a more extensive network of underground
tunnels than any other hydropower station. They run for a total length of 217
kilometers-1.7 times the distance
from Beijing to Tianjin.