The National Pumped Storage Planning key project — the Yunnan Xichou Pumped Storage Power Station — officially began construction on September 28. This marks the first large-scale pumped storage project in southern Yunnan, and it will explore a new paradigm for developing pumped storage projects in rocky desertification areas while providing strong support for the construction of a new-type power system.
The newly started Xichou Pumped Storage Power Station is located in Xichou County, Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, with an installed capacity of 1.2 million kilowatts and a total investment of approximately 8 billion yuan. The station will be equipped with four 300,000-kilowatt units. During peak electricity demand hours, it can convert 1.16 million cubic meters of clean water energy into 1.2 million kilowatt-hours of clean electricity per hour. Its annual clean energy consumption volume can meet the electricity demand of 980,000 residential users.
According to Zhou Gang, Deputy General Manager of the Yunnan Xichou Pumped Storage Project Owner's Project Department, the station is expected to be fully completed and put into operation in the early period of the "16th Five-Year Plan." By then, it will absorb 2.16 billion kilowatt-hours of clean energy annually, correspondingly reducing carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 1.9 million tons. A pumped storage power station has two reservoirs, upper and lower. During low-load periods of the power system, electricity is used to pump water for energy storage; during peak-load periods, water is released to generate electricity. This can promote the stable grid connection of volatile and intermittent new energy. Once completed, the Xichou Pumped Storage project will provide strong support for the stable grid connection of 8 million kilowatts of wind and photovoltaic power in southern Yunnan.
It is understood that the Xichou Pumped Storage Power Station is located in a karst rocky desertification area, with complex geological conditions and great construction difficulty. The upper reservoir of the station is mainly built by expanding and excavating a natural depression, adopting full-reservoir-basin anti-seepage technology; the lower reservoir is formed by directly building a dam on the Dama River, with the overall earth and rock excavation volume being less than 30% of the total reservoir capacity. In addition, the station has optimized the unit layout and improved the construction technology of the water conveyance system, fully meeting the stability requirements for mountain cavern excavation.
Furthermore, the construction of the Xichou Pumped Storage Power Station will also drive investment of nearly 18 billion yuan in upstream and downstream segments of the industrial chain, create approximately 5,000 jobs, and powerfully promote industrial development and economic quality improvement in this old revolutionary base area.
Comments