One drop of water generates six times of electricity! The world's largest clean energy corridor "Industrial Brain" is basically completed

The six large hydropower stations of Wudongde, Baihetan, Xiluodu, Xiangjiaba, Three Gorges and Gezhouba are arranged from top to bottom along the main stream of the Yangtze River, spanning more than 1,800 kilometers with a water level drop of more than 900 meters. A total of 110 hydropower generating units are operating in succession, and the vast river water brings endless green electricity.

Not long ago, the industrial Internet platform was deployed in six cascade hydropower stations, marking the basic completion of the "industrial brain" of the world's largest clean energy corridor , and greatly improving the operating efficiency, safety and reliability of the hydropower stations.

The world's largest clean energy corridor

What are the “world’s best”?

The world's largest clean energy corridor is composed of six cascade power stations on the main stream of the Yangtze River, namely Wudongde, Baihetan, Xiluodu, Xiangjiaba, Three Gorges and Gezhouba , with a total installed capacity of 71.695 million kilowatts, equivalent to the installed capacity of three "Three Gorges".

In December 2022, all units of the Baihetan Hydropower Station were put into operation, marking the completion of the world's largest clean energy corridor on the Yangtze River. This major project also shows the leap of my country's large-scale hydropower project construction from "Made in China" to "Created in China".

Looking back from Baihetan, this clean energy corridor has witnessed one breakthrough after another in my country’s hydropower technology.

Completed in the 1980s, the Gezhouba Dam is the first large-scale hydropower station on the mainstream of the Yangtze River. The 170,000-kilowatt hydro-turbine generator set designed, manufactured and installed independently by China has a runner diameter of 11.3 meters and is known as the "milestone of the world's Kaplan turbines."

This is the Gezhouba Water Conservancy Project taken on July 29, 2021 (drone photo).

Image source: Xinhua News Agency

The Three Gorges Project is a key backbone project for the management and development of the Yangtze River. It is also the world's largest water conservancy project and the hydropower project with the most comprehensive benefits to date.

This is a drone photo of the Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project under the setting sun, taken in Yichang City, Hubei Province on July 9, 2023.

Image source: Xinhua News Agency

The Three Gorges Hydropower Station has mastered the design and manufacturing technology of 700,000-kilowatt units. Through the Three Gorges Project, China's hydropower equipment manufacturing has achieved a historic leap from "following" to "running side by side".

In December 2005, the Xiluodu Hydropower Station officially started construction, with a single hydropower unit capacity of 770,000 kilowatts. In 2006, the Xiangjiaba Hydropower Station started construction, with a single hydropower unit capacity of 800,000 kilowatts, becoming the largest hydropower unit in the world at that time.

In 2015, the main construction of the Wudongde Hydropower Station project was officially started. A total of 12 850,000-kilowatt hydropower generating units were installed, with a total installed capacity of 10.2 million kilowatts. It not only created 8 "world firsts" such as the world's thinnest 300-meter ultra-high arch dam, but also set 15 "world firsts" such as the use of low-heat cement concrete for the entire dam.

Image source: Xinhua News Agency

The deep integration of information and communication technology and industrial economy,

Creating a new industrial ecology

" The water from the Yangtze River passes through six hydropower stations in sequence, which is equivalent to one drop of water generating six times of electricity ." According to Kang Yonglin, former deputy director of the Baihetan Project Construction Department of China Three Gorges Corporation, one cubic meter of water can produce 0.25 kilowatt-hours of green electricity through the Three Gorges Hydropower Station; the coordinated coordination of the six reservoirs realizes the power generation multiplier effect, the power generation can reach 2 kilowatt-hours, and the efficiency is increased to 8 times.

China is the country with the richest hydropower resources in the world, of which 70% are concentrated in the southwest region - Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Tibet. Hydropower is globally recognized as a clean, high-quality and flexible renewable energy source, with the characteristics of no pollution, low operating cost, high resource utilization, convenient for power peak regulation, and high comprehensive development benefits.

With all 16 million-kilowatt hydroelectric generators of Baihetan Hydropower Station put into operation, six hydropower stations are connected in a string. The 110 hydroelectric generators on this corridor produce an average of 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, which can meet the annual electricity needs of 360 million people.

Today, the cumulative power generation of the six cascade power stations has exceeded 3.5 trillion kWh, equivalent to saving more than 1 billion tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by more than 2.8 billion tons, effectively alleviating the power shortage in central and eastern China and provinces such as Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guangdong, playing an important role in the safe and stable operation of the power grid, and providing strong support for the implementation of the major national strategy of "transmitting electricity from west to east". At the same time, the coordinated cooperation of cascade reservoirs has released comprehensive benefits such as smooth shipping, water resources protection, and ecological protection.

Since 2020, China Yangtze Power, a subsidiary of the Three Gorges Group, has started the construction of an " industrial brain " on the corridor, independently developing an industrial Internet platform to deeply empower all business scenarios such as intelligent operation and maintenance, intelligent maintenance, smart dispatching, and intelligent decision-making, comprehensively improving the level of intelligent operation and maintenance of equipment, and assisting the digital construction of a new generation of hydropower stations.

At present, this hydropower "industrial brain" has trained and developed multiple "sub-brains" such as river basin smart operation, intelligent early warning, diagnostic decision-making, condition maintenance, and economic operation, and has been applied in 6 river basin cascade power stations.

Taking the Three Gorges Power Station as an example, the hydropower intelligent early warning "sub-brain" has established an intelligent early warning system with a multi-strategy approach, which can detect problems before the inflection point of equipment degradation, an average of 7-30 days earlier than traditional threshold alarms. Operation and maintenance personnel can deal with defects in a timely manner and extend the service life of the unit.

Now that the world's largest clean energy corridor has a "smart brain", I believe our hydropower development will have great potential and broad prospects!

Comprehensive sources: Xinhuanet, People's Daily, China Three Gorges Corporation official website, etc.