Baihetan hydropower station Photo: VCG

Southwest China's Baihetan hydropower station is conducting a 72-hour-trial operation, whose daily power output will meet the annual electricity demand for 500,000 people after all of its 16 generators officially enter service, CCTV reported on Sunday.

The trial operation is limited to generator 1 and 14, which will be officially put into use after the trial. The rest 14 generators of the hydropower station are forecast to be put into use by 2022 July.

The total capacity of Baihetan hydropower station reached a maximum of 16 million kilowatt-hours, making it the second powerful hydropower station in the world in terms of installed capacity after the Three Gorges Power Station in Central China's Hubei Province. 

Baihetan hydropower station is located in the boundary of Southwest China's Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. The total length of its underground cavities is 217 kilometers, equal to 1.7 times the distance from Beijing to Tianjin, which is also a new world record.