Located in Pu’er City, Yunnan Province and in the lower reaches of Lancang River, the hydropower station has a total reservoir capacity of 23.703 billion m3, equivalent to 16 times the storage capacity of the Dianchi Lake.
Huaneng Nuozhadu hydropower station is 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.
Earlier, the company said in a notice that the project, which features nine generating units with a capacity of 650MW each, was initially estimated to cost CNY45bn ($7.25bn), Reuters reported.
China, despite facing the financial, social and environmental costs rising from large-scale dams and reservoirs, has constructed the facility aimed to reduce the coal share in its total energy mix and tackle a major source of pollution.
Initially, China intended to bring total hydropower up to 420GW by 2020 by raising total hydropower capacity by 70GW over the 2011-2015.
