Sources from the annual conference of Hydropower Construction
Management Professional Committee under the China Hydropower
Engineering Association said China has set the initial hydropower
development plan for the Lancang River reaches. By 2020 the Lancang
River reach will produce a total of 22 million KW installed
capacity.
According to the plan, 15 step power stations with a total
installed capacity of 25.605 million KW will be built in the
Lancang River reaches. Eight step hydroelectric power stations with
9.4 million KW installed capacity and 46 billion KWH annual output
will be set up in the upper reaches. Another 7 step power stations
with 16.005 million KW installed capacity and 73.7 billion KWH
annual output will be built in the middle and lower reaches.
Step power stations in the Lancang River reaches have been
listed as key bases to activate the “West-to-East” electricity
transfer strategy. Relevant authorities started the overall
development of the Lancang River reaches from the accomplished
Manwan Hydropower Station some years ago.
Now, the first phase of Manwan Hydropower Station and Dazhao
Mountain Hydropower Station construction has finished. The Xiaowan
Hydropower Station with an installed capacity of 4.2 million KW is
currently under construction. It’s supposed that the first
power-generating unit will be deployed by 2010 and construction
finally finished by 2012.
Experts pinpoint that overall development confronts many
difficulties such as insufficient capital input for packaged
projects, over-rapid expenses for restoring forest vegetation and
lowered power pricing for the Manwan station. All these
difficulties have affected the construction process to some extent.
The Lancang River originates in southern Qinghai Province, where
its highest tributaries wind down the valleys of the Tanggula
Mountains. It enters Tibet Autonomous Region and Yunnan Province
and flows out of China from Mengla County of the Xishuangbanna
Autonomous Prefecture. The section out of China, called Mekong
River, empties into the South China Sea near Hoh Chi Minh City in
Vietnam after making its way through Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and
Cambodia.
(China.org.cn by Alex Xu and Daragh Moller, December 15,
2003)