China Huaneng Group, one of the country's major power producers, is to contribute around 4 billion yuan (about 500 million U.S. dollars) to the financing of more electrical development and support projects in China's island province of Hainan.

 

The projects will include a thermal power plant with two coal-fired generating units each with an installed capacity of 300,000 kw, a special berth to facilitate shipping of coal needed by the generating units, as well as a hydro-electrical project in western Hainan, according to Li Xiaopeng, General Manager of China Huaneng Group.

 

Construction of the thermal power plant is scheduled to begin next year and the first generating unit will start to generate power in April 2009, and the second in 2010, said Li.

 

The thermal power plant and the special berth have a budget of 2.8 billion yuan (about US$350 million).

 

Huaneng competed with a number of other Chinese companies in a public bidding for Hainan's coal-fired electrical development and support projects. It succeeded thanks to its "well-defined plans", said an official with the Hainan Provincial Bureau of Development and Reform.

 

Li Xiaopeng signed an agreement in electrical cooperation with Wei Liucheng, governor of the province, in Haikou, the provincial capital, last Thursday.

 

"I hope Huaneng will become an electrical pillar in the regional economic development of Hainan," said Wei, who predicted the province's total power consumption would reach 18 billion kw/hour annually by the year of 2010.

 

Huaneng Group, the parent company of Hong Kong-listed Huaneng Power International, runs power stations in 23 provinces and cities with a total installed capacity of 43.21 gigawatts at the end of 2005, about nine percent of the country's total at that time.

 

It has set an ambitious target to almost double the capacity to80 GW by 2010. The figure will account for more than 10 percent of the country's total expected power generation capacity by then, according to statistics.

 

Huaneng has made its presence in Hainan felt in the past through two previous acquisitions done in 2003 and 2004.

 

It now has a combined installed capacity of 1.06 million kw, producing 53.8 percent of the electricity supplied to the local power grids. Latest statistics show power plants owned by Huaneng Group generated more than 3.03 billion kw/hours of electricity in the first seven months of the year, accounting for 68 percent of the electricity supplied in the island province.

 

(Xinhua News Agency August 15, 2006)