One of the world's largest long-distance electricity transmission system started to deliver power on Saturday in a milestone step to link the Three Gorges power plant to the dam project's eastern markets in and around Shanghai.

The US$600 million transmission line begins in Longquan, about 60 kilometers from the Three Gorges dam in Central China's Hubei Province. It ends at Changzhou in East China's Jiangsu Province, 80 kilometers northwest of Shanghai. Its total length is 860 kilometers.

The 500-kilovolt direct-current transmission line carries electricity from Central China's power grids to East China. It will hook up to the power plant of the Three Gorges when it starts to generate electricity next August.

Built on a 2,000-meter dam on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the power plant forms one of the world's largest hydropower projects. The project aims to build 26 generators with a total capacity of 18,200 megawatts by 2009.

The first four generators have a combined capacity of 2.8 million kilowatts and are due on stream next August. They will be able to produce 5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity next year. Half of them will be sent to East China through the link to Changzhou, while the rest will be distributed to Central China.

Zhao Xizheng -- deputy general manager of the State Power Corp of China, which laid the transmission line -- said: "Today, with the operation of the link, we can now ensure that we are fully capable of transmitting the electricity from the Three Gorges, to link it to power grids, and finally deliver it to end users."

He said the company is constructing a dual transmission line to accompany the Changzhou link. When completed in May, the total capacity of the lines will be doubled to 3,000 megawatts.

Thus, the Changzhou link will more than triple the amount of power currently delivered from Central China to the east coast, from 1,200 megawatts to 4,200 megawatts.

Zhao said the establishment of the Three Gorges-Changzhou link means the completion of 80 percent of facilities to transmit electricity from the first batch of generators.

The construction of transmission lines accounts for a quarter of the total US$22 billion investment in the Three Gorges project. The rest is for the construction of the dam and power plant and the relocation of residents living near the site.

Company officials insisted that the project makes sense economically, despite the relative power glut in East China.

Li Yong'an, deputy general manager of the China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corp, said last month that electricity from the Three Gorges sold to the power grid will be priced at 0.25 yuan (3.04 US cents) per kilowatt-hour, compared with an average price of 0.38 yuan (4.6 US cents) in Shanghai and 0.35 yuan (4.2 US cents) for the whole of the East China region.

The price is also cheaper than the national average of 0.29 yuan (3.5 US cents), Li said.

When all the power-generating units start generating electricity by 2009, 40 percent of the electricity will be sold to East China, 44 percent to Central China, and the remaining 16 percent to South China's Guangdong Province.

(China Daily December 23, 2002)