Photo taken on June 29, 2020 shows water gushing out from a sluiceway of the Wudongde Hydropower Station on the border of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in southwest China. The first group of electricity-generation units at the Wudongde Hydropower Station was put into use on Monday.(Photo: Xinhua)

 
All units of the Wudongde Hydropower Station will officially be put into operation on Wednesday, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 30.5 million tons per year, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Wednesday. 

Becoming the seventh largest hydropower station in the world with the largest single unit capacity in operation, the power station is equipped with a capacity of 10.20 million kilowatts, CCTV reported, adding that the annual growth rate will reach 38.91 billion kilowatt-hours once the hydropower station being fully put into operation, the equivalent of saving 12.20 million tons of standard coal and reducing 30.50 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year. 

Wudongde Hydropower Station is designed as a concrete double-curved arch dam with a maximum height of 270 meters. The foundation bed of the dam is only 51.41 meters thick, which makes the hydropower station the thinnest 300-meter arch dam in the world at present.

The first series generator sets were put into production in June 2020, according to media reports. 

Wudongde Hydropower Station locates on the Jinsha River, the name for the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and sits between Southwest China's Yunnan Province and Sichuan Province.

Wudongde Station, together with Baihetan Hydropower Station, Xiluodu Hydropower Station and Xiangjiaba Hydropower Station, will form a cascade of power stations on the Jinsha River. The cluster will have an installed capacity of 46.46 million kilowatts, which is equivalent to twice the output of the Three Gorges Dam in the middle reaches of the Yangtze, and will generate about 190 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.

Global Times