construction site. (Photo by Wang Mubin and Hu Yunjie)

State Grid Xinyuan Zhejiang Ninghai Pumped Storage Power Station. (Photo by Wang Mubin and Hu Yunjie)

On June 15, Ningbo’s first large-scale pumped storage power station, State Grid Xinyuan Zhejiang Ninghai Pumped Storage Power Station, successfully completed live commissioning and was officially connected to the power grid today.

The pumped storage power station is known as the “granary of electricity”, consisting of two reservoirs, the upper and lower reservoirs, when the load is low, the water from the lower reservoir is pumped to the upper reservoir, and the water is released to the lower reservoir at the peak of load, and the potential energy of the water is used to generate electricity, so as to balance the peak and valley of electricity consumption.

Ninghai Pumped Storage Power Station is a provincial key project, with a total installed capacity of 1.4 million kilowatts, covering an area of 4,510 acres, and a designed average annual power generation of 1.4 billion kilowatt hours, which started construction in April 2018. Starting from the internal booster station, the power station is connected to the 500 kV Mingzhou substation of Ningbo Power Grid through the construction of 178 new transmission towers and the laying of 152.3 kilometers of transmission lines. After the power station is put into operation, it will provide stronger support for the development of Zhejiang’s new power system.