First Units of Xinjiang Dashi Gorge Hub Grid-Connected

The first two generating units of the Dashi Gorge Water Conservancy Hub in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region were connected to the power grid on 29 September, marking the point at which one of the country’s flagship western infrastructure projects begins delivering ecological, irrigation, flood-control and power-generation benefits. According to Xinhua, units No. 1 and No. 2 came online just under a year after the project began impoundment.

The hub, invested in and built by China Energy Engineering Group’s Gezhouba Group, is one of the national “172 major water-saving and water-supply projects” identified by the State Council, and forms part of China’s broader push to expand clean energy and water infrastructure across its western regions.

A Record-Setting Dam in the Tianshan

The project sits in the Dashi Gorge valley on the middle-lower reaches of the Kumarak River, at the border of Wensu and Wushi counties in Aksu Prefecture, deep in the Tianshan Mountains. Its maximum dam height of 247 meters sets a world record for concrete-faced gravel-sand (rockfill) dams, a figure confirmed across state and industry reporting.

The station has a total installed capacity of 750 megawatts (MW), using three 250 MW mixed-flow turbine-generator units. These are China’s first high-head, high-sediment-adapted cylindrical-valve Francis units, engineered to withstand large head variation, high sediment content and hard particle hardness — demanding conditions typical of glacier-fed mountain rivers.

Per ITHome, unit No. 3 has completed factory testing, and all three units are expected to be operational before the end of 2026. Once fully running, annual power generation is projected at about 1.893 billion kilowatt-hours — enough to meet the yearly electricity needs of roughly 600,000 households — while the hub provides peak-shaving support for the power systems of the four prefectures of South Xinjiang.

Four Functions, One Project

The hub is designed to serve four core functions: ecological water supply, irrigation, flood control and power-system peak-shaving. As Yicai noted, citing CCTV News, the project represents the world’s tallest concrete-faced gravel-sand dam.

According to Song Xiaojian, chairman of the Dashi Gorge Project Company, once complete the project can release 3.42 billion cubic meters of ecological water to the Tarim River annually, ease water shortages across more than 6.8 million mu (roughly 450,000 hectares) of farmland in the Aksu River basin, and raise the downstream flood-defense standard from a once-in-10-year to a once-in-50-year event, the China News Service reported.

The regulation challenge is rooted in the Kumarak River, the largest source tributary of the Tarim River, with an average annual runoff of about 4.879 billion cubic meters. Its flow depends on glacier meltwater with highly uneven seasonal distribution, leaving downstream irrigation areas long exposed to what officials describe as “spring drought, summer flooding, autumn shortage, winter dry.”

“In spring and autumn we hope for water, but in summer we worry about too much of it becoming a disaster,” villager Tuergong Xiemuxi of Tumuxiuke Township in Wensu County told China News Service.

Engineering and Environmental Measures

Zhou Junfang, chief engineer of the Dashi Gorge Project Company, said the management team applied cloud computing, artificial intelligence, virtual simulation and blockchain technology to overcome the project’s construction challenges, building a full-lifecycle management system from engineering management to scientific water-resource dispatch.

The precision demands have been exacting. Zhang Cunrong, chief engineer of the project’s Section III, told Xinhua Xinjiang that “quality control requirements during construction are extremely high; many parts require precision of 0.02 millimeters.”

To limit the project’s impact on fish, the hub has invested tens of millions of yuan in an ecological-protection system, including a fish-collection and transport system, a bionic fishway and a professional breeding-and-release station designed to restore river connectivity and boost native fish populations. The project has also stably employed more than 2,000 people since construction began.

What to Watch

With two units now feeding the grid, attention turns to unit No. 3 and the project’s full completion, planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. The slight schedule adjustment — an earlier plan had anticipated a first unit around June 2026 — reflects the technical difficulty of installing high-precision turbine-generator sets in a cold, high-altitude environment.

For Beijing, the Dashi Gorge hub is a test case for a familiar template: pairing massive water-conservancy engineering with clean-energy generation and ecological restoration in the country’s arid west. Whether it can deliver on its dual promises — stabilizing South Xinjiang’s power supply while reviving the Tarim River basin’s stressed water systems — will be watched closely as China seeks to replicate the model across other western provinces.