Design sketch of Suwalong Hydropower Station [Photo/Agencies]

Recently, the first hydropower station with an installed capacity beyond one million kilowatts in Tibet, the Suwalong hydropower station has been fully put under construction. It is planned that, the Yangtze River will be dammed in the end of 2017 and in 2021 the first generator sets of the hydroelectric power station will start to generate electricity. 

At the moment, the construction objects such as roads, power supplies and camps within the Suwalong Hydropower Station construction site have basically been finished, with a total length of 1,368 meters; the Suoduoxi tunnel with an investment amount numbering to 24 million yuan (3.9 millon US dollars) has been run-through; the over 760-meter-long sluice tunnel and the over 900-meter-long diversion tunnel are under rapid construction. The body part of the project will start to be constructed in November, 2017 after the dam on the Yangtze River is done. 

The Suwalong Hydro Power Station is located on the boundary of the Jinsha River, between Tibet and Sichuan; the Markham County of Tibet lies on its right bank and the Bathang County in Sichuan is situated on its left bank.

The hydropower station is constructed on a rock-fill dam with an asphalt concrete core. The total installed capacity of the hydropower station is 1,200,000 kilowatt with a total investment amount accounting to 17.89 billion yuan (2.89 billon US dollars). The hydropower station’s normal pool level is 2,475 meters, and its total reservoir capacity numbers to 674 million cubic meters with 4 sets of 300,000-kilowatt mixed-flow generators. The hydropower station averagely generates 5.426 billion kwhr with the highest dam reaching 112 meters. The Suwalong hydropower station is a pondage station.

The Suwalong hydropower station is the first large-scale hydropower station constructed on the upper reaches of the Jinsha River. This is an important project regarding supporting Tibetan socio-economic development which was defined at the 5th National Conference on Tibet Work; it is also the first project regarding West-East electricity transmission projects carried out by the central government. The construction of the hydropower station has fueled the hydroelectric development in the “Sanjiang River” therein it has become an ice-breaking project in the hydroelectric development at the upper reaches of the Jinsha River. The construction of the Suwalong hydropower station is also very significant for the construction of the West-East electricity transmission project, therein pushing forward “transferring Tibet's electricity out” as well as the socio-economic development in the local area.