Bailianhe Pumped Storage Power Station
Hubei, China
The 721st largest power station in the world
The Bailianhe Pumped Storage Power Station is a pumped-storage hydroelectric power station located 58 kilometres (36 mi) east of Huanggang in Hubei Province, China. It was constructed between 2004 and 2010 and has an installed capacity of 1,200 megawatts (1, 600, 000 hp). The power station operates by shifting water between an upper and lower reservoir to generate electricity. For this project, only the upper reservoir had to be created as an existing reservoir, the Bailianhe Reservoir, was used as the lower. During periods of low energy demand, such as at night, water is pumped from Bailianhe Reservoir up to the upper reservoir. When energy demand is high, the water is released back down to the lower reservoir but the pump turbines that pumped the water up now reverse mode and serve as generators to produce electricity. The process is repeated as necessary and the plant serves as a peaking power plant. The Bailianhe Upper Reservoir was created with the construction of a 59.4-metre (195 ft) tall concrete-face rock-fill dam. It has a crest length of 300 metres (980 ft) and can storage up to 24,960,000 m3 (20, 235 acre⋅ft) of which 16,630,000 cubic metres (13, 480 acre⋅ft) can be used for power generation. The lower Bailianhe Reservoir was constructed on the Lotus River in the 1960s by an embankment dam as part of an irrigation plan for the region and to supply water for
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