The giant Baihetan hydropower plant on the upstream branch of China’s Yangtze river has begun generating electricity for the first time on Monday, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The project’s first two 1-gigawatt (GW) turbines will start operating after a three-day trial, CCTV said. The project will eventually consist of 16 such units, making its total generation capacity second only to the Three Gorges Dam once it is completed in July next year. Baihetan was built by the China Three Gorges Corporation and is located on the border between the southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. It is part of a cascade of dams on the Jinsha river, which is the upstream section of the Yangtze. Though the Three Gorges Corporation said it was one of China’s biggest and most challenging engineering projects, with a dam height of 289 metres (948 feet), it has taken […]