China’s Lianghekou Hydropower Station on the Yalong River has become home to the world’s largest and highest altitude hydropower-solar hybrid project with 1 GW Kela PV Power Station coming online and connected to the 3 GW hydro project through a 500kV transmission line. It is situated at an altitude of 4,600 mtr.

Yalong River Basin Hydropower Development Co Ltd or Yalong Hydro says the Kela PV project forms phase I of the hydro-solar hybrid facility.

This is the 1^st time that a hydro-PV power project has been scaled to the GW level, making it a good demonstration project, says the company. It enables the project to generate clean energy from 2 renewable energy sources, thus ensuring security and stability of the grid.

This 1 GW PV capacity can generate 2 billion kWh of clean energy annually, enough to suffice annual electricity consumption of more than 700,000 households, says Astronergy that has provided 523.1 MW modules for this PV facility.

Previously, JA Solar had said it will be supplying its modules to Yalong Hydro for phase I of the pilot project (see China PV News Snippets).

According to the project owner Yalong Hydro—itself owned by the State Development and Investment Group (SDIC) and Sichuan Provincial Investment Group—phase I of the Kela PV station is now connected to the Sichuan main grid.

Yalong Hydro believes the Yalong River Basin can host about 30 GW hydropower, more than 60 GW wind and solar PV capacity and over 10 GW pumped storage power generation, which would take the total scale of clean energy base here to 100 GW.

“The development of water, wind, solar and storage resources in the entire Yalong River Basin will increase investment by about RMB 500 billion yuan, driving trillion-level industrial development,” stated Yalong Hydro.