It took 18 years from impossible to possible to approved construction. On December 16, 2021, Hubei Luotian Pingyuanyuan Pumped Storage Power Station was approved by the Provincial Development and Reform Commission, becoming the first approved pumped storage project in Hubei Province since the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan". It marks that the project has officially entered the construction period and has truly taken root in Luotian.

The Luotian Pingyuan Pumped-storage Power Plant Project under the severe situation of national epidemic prevention and control, the feasibility study phase and other preliminary work only took one year, breaking the record of the shortest time in the feasibility study phase of the State Grid Pumped-storage Power Plant project, creating a " Hubei speed".

The Luotian Pingyuan Pumped Storage Power Station has a total investment of 9.408 billion yuan and an installed capacity of 1,400MW. The power station pivot project is mainly composed of upper and lower reservoirs and water transmission and power generation systems. The main dam of the upper reservoir is a concrete face rockfill dam with a maximum dam height of 64 meters, a normal storage level of 822.00 meters, and an adjusted storage capacity of 6.21 million cubic meters; the lower reservoir is a concrete gravity dam with a maximum dam height of 60.5 meters and a normal storage level of 211.50 meters , Adjust the storage capacity of 6.38 million cubic meters. After completion, it will undertake tasks such as peak shaving, valley filling, frequency modulation, phase modulation, energy storage and emergency backup for the Hubei power system.

Luotian Pingyuanyuan Pumped Storage Power Station plans to hold a groundbreaking ceremony on December 28 and start construction in the first half of 2022. After it is completed and put into operation, it will effectively promote the development of Luotian's clean energy industry, continue to unleash economic driving force to improve transportation convenience, create labor and employment opportunities, increase local fiscal taxation, promote the continuous increase of farmers' income and county economic development, and reduce wind power, photovoltaics and other new energy sources. To absorb the impact on the operation of Hubei Power Grid, and meet the peak shaving capacity needs of Hubei Power Grid during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period. Keywords: engineering construction, engineering construction

The project took 18 years from planning to approval. After four sessions of the county party committee and county government, under the perseverance of the Luotian County Development and Reform Bureau, the project finally went from impossible to possible to approved for construction. In 2004, Luotian County began to plan the construction of Pingyuan Pumped Storage Project. With the support of relevant national, provincial, municipal and county departments, the project passed expert review in April 2019 and was included in the national pumped storage plan in September 2020. In October 2020, Luotian County People’s Government signed a contract with Hubei Energy Group, a subsidiary of Three Gorges Construction Group. In January 2021, the project feasibility study report passed expert review. In May, the owner unit established a project company in Luotian and launched the physical product in July. According to the investigation, the project was approved by the Provincial Development and Reform Commission on December 16. Editor/Sang Xiaomei