Chinese state-owned energy company Huaneng Group has commissioned today the Huaneng Xiaowan Hydropower–Solar Hybrid Project in Yunnan province, in southwestern China.
The facility is operated by the company's subsidiary Huaneng Lancang River Hydropower Co., Ltd. at the Xiaowan Hydropower Station. It has a total installed capacity of 5.43 GW, including 4.2 GW of hydropower and 1.23 GW of solar power.
Huaneng said project introduces an innovative “hydro–solar intelligent coordination” control technology that integrates electricity from 16 solar power plants through a single collection station and then transmits the combined output alongside hydropower generation from the Xiaowan Hydropower Station.
“By leveraging the reservoir’s large energy storage capacity and the hydropower plant’s millisecond-level response capability, the system enables coordinated hydro–solar operation and integrated storage and transmission,” the company said in a statement.
The project has reportedly overcome key technical challenges in hydro–solar coordinated stability control. Based on a fully domestically controlled system for the hydropower plant, it has also achieved full localization of core equipment, including photovoltaic station monitoring systems, protection devices, and static synchronous compensators (STATCOMs), Huaneng said.
The Xiaowan Dam is a 292-meter-high double-curvature arch dam on the Lancang River in Yunnan. It was completed in 2010 and is one of the tallest of its kind in the world. Its installed capacity comes from from six 700 MW Francis turbines.
With a massive reservoir capacity of about 15 billion m³, the dam plays a key regulatory role in the cascade system, enabling multi-year water storage, flood control, sediment retention, and stable downstream flow management. Functioning as a giant natural battery, it is also essential for coordinating hydropower output with large-scale renewables generation in the whole Yunnan province.
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