Deep in the Jinsha River Gorge, straddling the border between Leibo County, Sichuan Province, and Yongshan County, Yunnan Province, a mega hydropower station has quietly safeguarded the river's tranquility for over 13 years. Through countless days and nights, the Xiluodu Hydropower Plant has achieved the milestone of 5,000 days of work safety with "zero casualties and zero equipment accidents," with a cumulative power generation exceeding 740 billion kWh.

What enables this strategic national asset to operate safely and efficiently, consistently for over a decade? What secrets lie behind this achievement?

The answers are woven into every cubic meter of concrete in the dam, resonate in the hum of every turbine unit, and live on in the unwavering dedication of every hydropower worker standing guard day and night

Strengthening the Foundation: Forging a "Smart" and Sturdy Dam

The Xiluodu Hydropower Plant features a double-curvature concrete arch dam, with a maximum height of 285.5 meters and a total installed capacity of 13,860 MW. It is the world's first high arch dam hydropower station with a capacity exceeding 10,000 MW, and its first batch of units realize commercial operation in July 2013. The station pioneered intelligent high-arch dam construction in China. Key technologies developed during its construction have transformed arch dam management from conventional to intelligent practices, ensuring structural integrity, balanced progress, uniform quality, and continuous operations. This breakthrough has ushered China's hydropower sector into the era of intelligent construction.

In 2016, the "Key Technologies for Intelligent Construction of the 300-meter-level Xiluodu Arch Dam" won the Second Prize of the National Award for Science and Technology Progress, and the Xiluodu Hydropower Plant received the "FIDIC Outstanding Project Award", becoming the only hydropower project among the 21 global award winners that year. In 2019, the dam of Xiluodu Hydropower Plant was granted Class A safety registration. With its exceptional construction quality, this station has laid a solid foundation for over a decade of safe and stable operation.

Today, at the Dam Monitoring Center of Xiluodu Hydropower Plant, a "digital twin of the Xiluodu Dam" is powered by real-time data from an extensive network of sensors, feeding an intelligent system that serves as its "brain". This integration has established a comprehensive intelligent management platform, enabling full lifecycle management of the dam.

The Xiluodu Hydropower Plant has a flood control capacity of 4.65 billion cubic meters and, to date, has cumulatively intercepted 22.354 billion cubic meters of floodwater. With a total installed capacity of 13,860 MW, the plant is equipped with 18 hydro-generating units, with a single unit capacity of 770 MW. Its average annual power generation is 57.12 billion kWh, supplying clean electricity to the East and South China regions. Beyond flood control and power generation, the Xiluodu Hydropower Plant continues to deliver comprehensive benefits, including sediment trapping and siltation mitigation, enhanced navigation conditions, ecological conservation, and regional economic growth.

Rigorous Management: Precision Operation and Maintenance for Every Unit

Just as the station's excellent construction foundation forged a robust "innate constitution", so too does the precision operation and maintenance after commissioning serve as the "postnatal care" that ensures the Xiluodu Hydropower Plant's sustained safe operation.

Inside the underground powerhouses on the left and right banks of the Xiluodu Hydropower Plant, 18 giant hydro-generating units, each with a capacity of 770 MW, roar day and night. The Xiluodu Hydropower Plant has deeply embraced the production concept of "precision dispatching, lean operation, and meticulous maintenance." Building upon this, it has developed a lean production management system centered on equipment management as the core framework and Equipment Directors as the focal point, with functional stratification between technical oversight and field operations. This system comprises two complementary strategies: a lean production strategy grounded in trend analysis, intelligent early warning, targeted maintenance for critical equipment, condition-based maintenance, and diagnostics-informed operation; and a preventive maintenance strategy driven by systematic diagnosis and assessment.

The Xiluodu Hydropower Plant has steadily advanced key equipment renovation projects, successfully upgrading critical industrial control systems for multiple units. Notably, stop log gate's lifting efficiency for ecological dispatch has increased by 70%, the AGC response rate of two units has quadrupled, and three units have been recognized as National Benchmark Units for Hydropower Generator Reliability.

Scaling New Heights: Technology's Role in Safety Never Wanes

Behind the 5,000 days of safe operation lies a relentless pursuit of technological innovation.

The Xiluodu Hydropower Plant has consistently positioned technological innovation as the core driver of safe development. This commitment is evidenced by milestones ranging from the retrofitting of the first domestically developed 1,000-ton overhead crane electric control system and the commissioning of the right-bank surface switchyard, to the deployment of intelligent patrol inspection systems and innovative flood-control emergency drill models. Each zero-to-one breakthrough has propelled the plant further along its ascent to the pinnacle of hydropower technology, while reinforcing the station's safe and stable operation.

The total length of the cushion pond gallery at the Xiluodu Hydropower Plant exceeds 3 kilometers, and the dam gallery exceed 5 kilometers. "We began researching gallery inspection robots in 2021 and developed this intelligent robot inspection system, which has greatly enhanced operational autonomy and inspection efficiency of hydropower inspections. Robots can identify problem points more accurately than the human eye, precisely capturing changes as small as 1 millimeter. They have now become indispensable 'employees' for us," said Hou Chunyao, Director of Hydraulic and Metal Structure Equipment Management in the Production Management Department at Xiluodu Hydropower Plant.

Four rail-mounted robots, three tracked robots, and one quadruped robot achieve full-coverage, three-dimensional, and intelligent structural safety perception for the cushion pond and dam galleries of Xiluodu Hydropower Plant.

To date, the Xiluodu Hydropower Plant has cumulatively led or participated in the drafting and publication of 4 national standards and 30 industry standards, and has been granted over 875 patents (including 155 invention patents). Xiluodu Hydropower Plant has overcome technical difficulties in the weld repair of trunnion of radial gate in the spillway tunnel, achieved full robotic coverage of gallery inspections, and safely implemented unattended operating mode with minimal on-site staffing at the right-bank power station.

Guard: Inheriting the Three Gorges Project Spirit with Ingenuity

No matter how advanced the equipment or how perfect the system, it ultimately relies on people for execution. The 5,000-day safety record has been created by generations of Xiluodu staff through their dedication and commitment.

At Xiluodu, veteran worker ZHANG Chengjun, who has worked at Gezhouba, Three Gorges, and now Xiluodu, leads an innovation studio named after him. Established in 2016, the studio has been designated as a Sichuan Provincial Model Worker and Craftsman Innovation Studio. According to ZHANG, the studio focuses on cost reduction and efficiency improvement, energy conservation and emission reduction, technical upgrading, technological innovation, and work safety, tackling technical problems arising from the operation, maintenance, and overhaul of hydro-generating units. Employees with innovative ideas are encouraged to seek technical and staffing support at the studio.

ZHANG Chengjun has devoted himself to the mechanical maintenance of Xiluodu's giant units, and resolved the bearing oil mist problem that had long plagued large hydropower stations across China. He has independently developed maintenance tools that significantly enhance emergency repair efficiency and cut power generation losses. Additionally, he has prepared operation and maintenance standards while setting up an innovation studio to mentor young engineers. Through comprehensive efforts in equipment retrofitting, safe maintenance practices, and talent development, he has safeguarded the stable operation of the units year after year.

At Xiluodu, BAO Tangwei practices the Three Gorges Project Spirit with passion and ingenuity. On the maintenance frontline of Xiluodu's flood discharge gates and hydraulic-metal structures, he has fulfilled his original aspiration—that "the vitality of technological innovation lies in its practicality"—with 34 granted invention patents, 65 granted utility model patents, and one granted international patent. The application of relevant technological achievements has provided a demonstration for risk prevention and control in the safe operation, maintenance, and overhaul of flood discharge equipment at high-head hydropower stations.

This 5,000-day safety record demonstrates that: the reliable operation of this strategic national asset is rooted in the meticulous craftsmanship of its construction, sustained by lean management throughout its operation and maintenance, driven by relentless technological innovation, and, above all, anchored in the enduring commitment of generations of hydropower professionals.

The Jinsha River surges on, and the story of Xiluodu continues to unfold.