Lancang River - Energy Base for China, Southeast Asia

Home>>Life

Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, January 31, 2002

Lancang River - Energy Base for China, Southeast Asia

The powerful Lancang river in southwest China's Yunnan province will become an energy depot not only for China, but also for southeast Asian countries, Chinese economic experts predicted.

DISCUSSION

CHINESE

SEND TO FRIEND

China to Build Huge Power Station in Sw China's Yunnan

The powerful Lancang river in southwest China's Yunnan province will become an energy depot not only for China, but also for southeast Asian countries, Chinese economic experts predicted.

China plans to build eight hydroelectric power stations in the middle and lower reaches of the river, the fifth longest in the country, with a combined installed capacity of 15.55 million kw, according to an announcement jointly made by the China State Power Corporation and Yunnan Provincial Government recently.

Upon completion, the eight hydroelectric power stations will generate 74.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, sources said.

Construction has recently started on the 4.2-million-kw Xiaowan Hydroelectric Power Station, the country's second largest after the Three Gorges power station on the Yangtze river.

Xiaowan Hydropower Station to Build in Yunnan

The Lancang river starts in Tanggula Mountain on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and runs a total of 4,500 kilometers, flowing from Tibet into Xishuangbanna, in Yunnan province, joining the Mekong River, and flowing on to the South China Sea via Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Yunnan province has been listed as a major power source for China's massive west-to-east electricity transmission project. And the development of hydropower on the Lancang river is a key part of China's efforts to exploit local hydroelectric resources.

In 2001, Yunnan province sent 900,000 kilowatts of electricity to the coastal province of Guangdong, an economic powerhouse in southern China, said sources with the Yunnan Provincial Power Group Company.

After 2015, Yunnan will send 8 million kilowatts of electricity annually to Guangdong and other places in China.

According to a bilateral agreement, Thailand will buy 1.5 million kilowatts of electricity from China from 2013 and another 1.5 million kilowatts starting in 2014.

In accordance with a bilateral agreement signed in 1999, Yunnan started sending electricity to Laos this month.

The area irrigated by the Lancang river and its water volume only account for 20.7 percent and 14.5 percent of the total of the Lancang-Mekong River as a whole, but the river possesses a potential reserve of 36.56 million kilowatts of hydropower resources. Of this total, some 70 percent is concentrated in Yunnan.

Theoretically, the amount of potential hydropower that can be tapped in the Mekong river stands at 37 million kilowatts. Of this total, 51 percent is in Laos, 33 percent in Cambodia and 16 percent is distributed in Thailand and Vietnam.

Experts said that construction of large hydroelectric power stations on the Lancang river is cost-efficient. They calculated that the combined installed capacity of the eight planned power stations on the Lancang is 5.5 percent more than that of the 11 power stations to be constructed on the Mekong.

However, the total investment to the eight Lancang power stations only accounts for 33.5 percent of the investment for the 11 Mekong power stations.

As early as 1946, China had built a hydroelectric power station with an installed capacity of 400 kilowatts on the Xi'er river, a tributary of the Lancang. Several power stations have also gone into operation on the Lancang river.

Questions?Comments? Click here

China to Build Huge Power Station on Lancang-Mekong River

Eight Power Stations to be Built on Lancang River