CHENGDU, Dec. 25 (Xinhua) -- Southwest China's Sichuan Province has sent over 1 trillion kWh of hydroelectricity to other regions of the country in a west-east electricity transmission program over the past 21 years.
The amount equals to 10 times of the annual power generation of the Three Gorges hydropower station, the State Grid Sichuan Electric Power Company announced Wednesday.
The Sichuan Grid started to send electricity to the central and eastern Chinese regions in 1998.
The huge amount of clean energy has helped reduce the consumption of 400 million tonnes of power coal and emissions of 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, 8 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide and 1.5 million tonnes of nitrogen oxides in eastern and central China, said the grid operator.
Since 2006, the State Grid has invested over 100 billion yuan (14.3 billion U.S. dollars) on the construction of hydropower transmission lines for the west-east electricity transmission program in the hydropower-rich province.
Sichuan now has the country's largest trans-regional power transmission capacity with over 30 million kilowatts.
By the end of November, Sichuan had an installed hydropower generating capacity of 78.39 GW and three more power transmission lines with a total transmission capacity of 24 million kilowatts are expected to be added, said Tan Hongen, chairman of the Sichuan company.
The new lines can help better use the idle hydropower capaicty and the province will then be able to send 250 billion kWh of electricity to other regions annually, said Tan.
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