(Yicai) Aug. 25 -- Yalong River Hydropower Development, a Chinese state-owned hydropower developer, has started construction work on the largest new energy project in China's southwestern Sichuan province.

The Zhalashan Photovoltaic Power Station, whose construction began today, will have an installed capacity of 1.17 gigawatts and average annual power generation of 2,150 gigawatt-hours, The Paper reported. It project cover an area of 18 square kilometers at an altitude of between 3,200 and 4,200 meters.

Located in Sichuan’s Liangshan prefecture, the project has total investment of CNY6 billion (USD825.9 million). It is expected to install 2.45 million N-type solar modules, which are more efficient than P-types, making it China’s largest solar power plant using only the N-type.

The plant, which will be fully connected to the grid in 2025, is part of the Yalong River Basin Clean Energy Base, one of China's nine clean energy hubs. Once fully operational, the base will exceed 100 GW, becoming one of the world's largest clean energy sources.

Hydropower will generate 30 GW of the base’s total electricity, wind and solar power over 60 GW, and pumped-storage hydropower more than 10 GW.

The Yalong River Basin Clean Energy Base is expected to attract about CNY500 billion (USD68.6 billion) of investment to the area, driving the development of related industries into the trillions of Chinese yuan (hundreds of billions of US dollars), Yalong Hydro Chairman Qi Ningchun said.

Editor: Futura Costaglione