Panorama of the head reservoir of Yongjia Pumped Storage Power Station.

In recent days, more than 200 workers have been fully engaged in the construction of the head reservoir of Yongjia Pumped Storage Power Station (YPSPS). The construction of No.1 auxiliary dam has officially begun, and the excavation of No.3 auxiliary dam foundation is basically completed... The whole project has been rapidly accelerated laying a sound foundation for building a green YPSPS.

Starting in August this year, the excavation of No. 3 auxiliary dam foundation has was a bottleneck for the project of rerouting the head reservoir, given its maximum height of 29 meters, dam crest length of 160 meters, and width of 8 meters. However, at the construction site of No. 3 auxiliary dam, reporters recently saw that the whole dam foundation excavation had been completed, and workers were cleaning up the final debris. “After the dam foundation is cleaned, we will enter the dam foundation concrete construction stage,” said Li Gangfeng, deputy manager of Sinohydro Bureau 5 Co., Ltd., the undertaker of the YPSPS. According to him, with the impending concrete pouring of No. 3 auxiliary dam, the head reservoir project has entered a new stage.

“We designed to adopt a construction technique, rock-filled concrete, which leverages both the good bearing capacity and permeability of rockfill as well as the high strength and durability of concrete, to build the gravity auxiliary dam,” said Tian Zhenbao, deputy manager of EPC at YPSPS. Effectively applied in the construction of the No.3 auxiliary dam, this technique enables the parallel operation of two processes: rockfill warehousing and self-compacting concrete production and pouring, which greatly improved efficiency and shortened the construction period.

It is said that YPSPS is the largest comprehensive utilization project of water resources in the history of Yongjia County, with a total investment of 8.02 billion yuan and a total installed capacity of 1200 MW. The upper reservoir is located in Nancheng Sub-district and the lower reservoir is located in Qiaoxia Town. It is expected to begin electricity generation with the first unit in July 2027.