Huaneng Nuozhadu Hydropower Station—China’s fourth largest hydropower station put into operation

The last generating unit of Huaneng Nuozhadu Hydropower Station was officially put into operation on June 26. With that, Huaneng Nuozhadu Hydropower Station, with total installed capacity of 5850MW, was fully completed and put into production, making it the fourth largest hydropower station in China and the largest hydropower station in Yunnan Province.

Huaneng Nuozhadu Hydropower Station is located in Pu'er City, Yunnan Province and in the lower reaches of Lancang River. It is at the 5th cascade under the cascade planning of the middle and lower reaches of Lancang River, with total reservoir capacity of 23.703 billion m3, equivalent to 16 times the storage capacity of the Dianchi Lake. As one of the major strategic projects in the “electricity transmission from the west to the east”, and “delivering electricity from Yunnan Province to other regions” program, Huaneng Nuozhadu Hydropower Station is the largest hydropower station along the Lancang River and in Yunnan Province. The station is equipped with 9 generating units with single capacity of 650MW. The first generating unit was put into operation in September, 2012. As of June 26, 2014, the Station had generated electricity of 32,104GWh since its first commercial operation, equivalent to saving of 9.56 million tons of standard coal, and CO2 reduction of 18.77 million tons each year.

During project construction, Huaneng Nuozhadu Hydropower Station innovatively developed a digital dam monitoring information management system, and successfully applied the clay core and gravel admixing process. The vertical core-wall rockfill dam is 261.5m high, ranked No.1 in China and No.3 in the world. The open spillway is ranked No.1 in Asia in terms of scale and No.1 in the world in terms of flood discharge and flow velocity.