Massive Chinese coal plant begins operations

Guodian Beilun Power Plant, which is in Xinqi Town, Beilun District of Ningbo City in East China's Zhejiang Province, is the first coal-fired power plant to be built in China with a loan from the World Bank. The power plant has five 600-MW subcritical units and two 1,000-MW ultra-supercritical units, with a total installed capacity of 5,000 MW. Of which, Phase I 1,200 MW of the power plant kicked off in January 1988 and was completed in November 1994, and Phase II 1,800 MW kicked off in June 1996 and was completed in September 2000. The 2,000-MW Phase III project kicked off on December 15, 2006, and was completed in June 2009.

Due to the impact of the global financial crisis, a weak load demand, and the restriction on outgoing transmission lines, the power plant was not in full-load operations by July 2010. As a result, Guodian Zhejiang Beilun Power Generation Company Limited, the owner of the power plant, tried to upgrade outgoing transmission lines. As a support project to the Phase I expansion of the power plant, two 500-kilovolt transmission lines, Beilun-Jurong and Beilun-Zhangzhou, were commissioned in late June 2010. Additionally, an improving economy and a coming summer peak in power consumption created favorable conditions for the power plant to operate all seven units in full load.

On July 2, 2010, the load of East China Power Grid surpassed 160 gigawatts, a record high in its history. It's expected that the maximum load in East China Power Grid would reach 162 gigawatts this summer, an increase of 13 from the same period last year.