For the first time, the Baihetan Hydropower Station, which uses low-heat cement concrete for the whole dam, has been put into operation for power generation, marking the completion of the world's largest clean energy corridor!

On December 20, the last million-kilowatt unit of Baihetan Hydropower Station, the world's largest large-scale hydropower project under construction and the most comprehensive technical difficulty, was put into operation for power generation, which means that all 16 units of Baihetan Hydropower Station have been put into operation for power generation, marking the full completion of the world's largest clean energy corridor.

Located in Ningnan County, Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province and Qiaojia County, Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province, Baihetan Power Station is the second of four cascade power stations in the lower reaches of the Jinsha River. The Baihetan Hydropower Station project is huge in scale, complex in geological conditions, and ranks first in the world in terms of comprehensive technical difficulty. The normal water storage level of the reservoir is 825 meters, and the area of the control basin is 430,300 square kilometers, accounting for 91% of the area of the Jinsha River basin. The main project of the power station started construction in July 2017, and the first batch of units was put into operation on June 28, 2021. As of December 20, the cumulative power generation capacity of Baihetan Hydropower Station exceeded 53 billion kilowatt hours, mainly transmitting to Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other regions, helping the integrated and high-quality development of the Yangtze River Delta region.

The Baihetan Hydropower Station has created six world firsts

The Baihetan Hydropower Station project is huge in scale, complex in geological conditions, and located in the dry and hot valley of the Jinsha River, ranking first in the world in terms of comprehensive technical difficulty, and ranking first in the world in six main technical indicators.

The single capacity of the generator set is 1 million kilowatts, the world's first:

Eight million kilowatt hydro-generator units are installed on the left and right banks. The single unit is 50 meters tall and weighs more than 8,000 tons, which is comparable to the weight of the Eiffel Tower. Each unit generates 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity for one hour of operation, which can meet the electricity consumption of a family for 400 years.

The largest underground cavern complex in the world:

The underground caverns were excavated with 25 million cubic meters, enough to build ten pyramids of Khufu. It consists of more than 400 caverns with a total length of 217 kilometers.

The world's largest group of pressureless flood discharge tunnels:

In order to ensure the safety requirements of the once-in-10,000-year catastrophic flood project, three of the world's largest non-pressurized flood relief tunnels were built. The flood holes are like building three highways for floodwater, with a maximum of 47 meters per second, equivalent to 170 kilometers per hour, and filling a West Lake in 15 minutes.

The scale of cylindrical tailwater pressure regulating chamber is the first in the world:

It is designed with 8 cylindrical tailwater pressure regulating chambers, with a diameter of 42 to 49 meters and a straight wall height of 77 to 92 meters, which is the largest diameter and height of the tailwater pressure regulating chamber in the world's built hydropower projects.

The world's first full dam to use low-heat cement concrete:

The Baihetan Hydropower Station dam is a concrete double-curved arch dam, which means that it is curved in both the horizontal and vertical directions, with a top arc length of 709 meters and a maximum dam height of 289 meters, equivalent to a 100-story building. The Baihetan Dam uses low-heat cement concrete, with a total amount of more than 8 million cubic meters of low-heat cement concrete, which is the volume of three Khufu pyramids.

The seismic parameters of the 300-meter high arch dam are the first in the world:

The crack-resistant safety factor of the Baihetan concrete structure exceeds 2.0, and the dam has long withstood 16.5 million tons of the world's second largest water thrust, equivalent to the thrust of 15,000 Long March 5 rockets.