Huawei Combining Hydro With PV For Stable Power Supply
Source：taiyangnews
Located in Sichuan’s Yalong River Basin, the 1 GW Kela PV Power Plant combines solar with hydropower to deliver stable energy output
Sustainable Energy at Extreme Heights: The Kela PV Power Plant covers 16 million m² in Sichuan Province, using solar and hydro to overcome fluctuating renewable energy production. (Source: Huawei Digital Power)
Key Takeaways
- Huawei's Kela PV Power Plant, a finalist for The smarter E AWARD 2024, includes over 2 million PV modules with a 1 GW capacity
- Solar electricity from the PV plant is fed into the Lianghekou Hydropower Plant, where fluctuations are stabilized
- This hybrid system takes advantage of Sichuan’s seasonal weather patterns, complementing wet summers with solar and dry winters with hydropower to maximize efficiency
The Kela PV Power Plant, located in the Yalong River Basin in China's Sichuan Province, developed by Huawei, was a finalist for The smarter E AWARD 2024 in the Outstanding Projects category. The plant is located at an altitude ranging from 4,000 to 4,600 m, covering an area of around 16 million m2.
With an enhanced installed capacity of 1 GW, the Kela PV Power Plant consists of more than 2 million PV modules and connects to the Lianghekou Hydropower Plant through a 500-kV transmission line, combining solar and hydro power to maximize power efficiency. The Lianghekou Hydropower Plant itself has an installed capacity of 3 GW. With a total capacity of 10.8 billion m3, the Lianghekou reservoir has a regulation capacity of around 6.56 billion m3, which means it can play a key role in regulating the fluctuations of the Kela photovoltaic installation.
Thus, the unstable solar electricity is fed directly into the Lianghekou Hydropower Plant, where it is regulated and stabilized to produce a reliable power source. Furthermore, wet summers and dry winters make PV and hydropower naturally complementary, maximizing OpEx efficiency. According to Huawei, the plant operates in extreme weather conditions such as very high altitude, low pressure and temperatures of below -30 ◦C.