Hydro-electric stations in western China are lighting up homes
hundreds of kilometers away as the massive west-to-east electricity
transmission project comes online.
The project will exploit the abundant hydro-power resources in
southwest China's
Guizhou,
Yunnan and
Sichuan provinces and transfer electricity eastward to south,
central and north China. Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing,
Tianjin and Tangshan will benefit from the power-transmission
project.
Yunnan Province, one of the leading power providers in southwest
China, transmitted 1.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to
Guangdong Province, an economic powerhouse in south China, in the
first seven months of this year.
Moreover, the traditional pattern of transmitting power only in the
wet season has been replaced by regular power transmission
throughout the year.
An
official with the Yunnan Provincial Power Group estimated its
annual transmission of electricity to Guangdong Province to be 3
billion kwhs this year, which is more than the total amount of
electricity Yunnan sent to Guangdong in the past five years.
With six rivers running through the province, Yunnan is a major
power source in China with 90 million kws of exploitable installed
capacity, ranking second in China. The powerful Lancang River will
become an energy depot not only for China, but also for southeast
Asian countries. When the eight planned hydro-electric power
stations are completed built in the middle and lower reaches of the
river, the fifth longest in the country, they will generate 73
billion kwhs of electricity annually.
Construction has started on the 4.2-million-kw Xiaowan
Hydro-electric Power Station, the country's second largest after
the Three Gorges power station on the Yangtze River.
Work on the first phase of the Manwan Hydro-electric Power Station,
with an installed capacity of 1.25 million kws, has been completed.
Three generating units at the 1.35-million-kw Dachaoshan power
plant have gone into operation.
By
the end of last year, the installed generating capacity of Yunnan
soared to 8.51 million kws, more than the anticipated capacity for
2005.
The province began to transmit power to Guangdong in 1993. However,
the annual power transmission averaged 580 million kwhs in the past
nine years as a result of irrational structure and poor
facilities.
To
meet the growing demand for power supply in Guangdong, Yunnan has
built an ultrahigh voltage supergrid, a 500-kilovolt power
converting station and a 500-kilovolt transmission line. It plans
to invest 1.8 billion yuan (US$220 million) to build another
500-kilovolt power transmission and converting project in the near
future.
Meanwhile, Sichuan will provide 750 million kilowatt hours of
electricity each to Shanghai and Zhejiang this year, in addition to
4.9 billion kilowatt hours to neighboring Chongqing.
(Xinhua News
Agency September 13, 2002)