Wudongde Hydropower Station, dubbed the "smartest" mega hydropower station in the world, will go into operation in July 2020, media reported on Sunday.
Located in southwest China, the hydropower station is under construction using cutting-edge intelligent technologies, including real-time temperature monitoring and intelligent grouting equipment, making it the smartest power project in the world and showing the highest level of intelligent construction in China's dam industry.
Wudongde Hydropower Station has embedded thermometers and cooling pipes in the concrete to detect the concrete temperature in real time. Through the intelligent water flow system, the flow can be automatically adjusted to realize the cooling process of concrete in an intelligent way.
The 2.8 million cubic meters of concrete in the dam uses low heat cement that can withstand large temperature differences, which can cause cracking of concrete and threaten the safety of the dam, a worldwide problem in hydropower engineering, media reported.
The concrete temperature is 7.1 C at the construction site, while the atmospheric temperature is 29 C, according to measurements taken by a reporter from China Central Television (CCTV) on Sunday.
The hydropower station is the first dam in the world to fully use low heat cement.
Wudongde Hydropower Station is designed as a concrete double-curved arch dam with a maximum height of 270 meters. The foundation bed of the dam is only 51 meters thick, which makes the hydropower station the thinnest 300-meter arch dam in the world at present. The "thin" concrete will be able to afford a storage of approximately 7.4 billion cubic meters of water in its reservoir, according to CCTV news.
The excavation length of the main workshop of the underground power station in Wudongde dam broke the world record with a height of 89.8 meters, equivalent to 30-story building.
The hydropower station will be able to generate 38.9 billion kilowatts of electricity annually after its 12 generating units start operation. The station is scheduled to impound its reservoir in July 2020, CCTV news reported Sunday.
The first batch of generator sets are scheduled to be put into production in July 2020, and the project is scheduled to be fully completed in December 2021, according to China Three Gorges Corp, constructor of the project.
As a green energy, the amount of hydropower produced by Wudongde will save 12.2 million tons of standard coal and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide by 30.5 million tons and 104,000 tons every year, according to CCTV news.
Wudongde Hydropower Station is on the Jinsha River, the name for the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and sits between Southwest China's Yunnan Province and Sichuan Province.
Wudongde Station, together with Baihetan Hydropower Station, Xiluodu Hydropower Station and Xiangjiaba Hydropower Station, will form a cascade of power stations on the Jinsha River. The cluster will have an installed capacity of 46.46 million kilowatts, which is equivalent to twice the output of the Three Gorges Dam in the middle reaches of the Yangtze, and will generate about 190 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.
