On the continuous ridges of Honghe in Yunnan, wind turbines stand tall on the hills, rotating day and night to deliver clean electricity. This wind turbine forest, which once set a record for single unit capacity of mountain wind power in China, has now been expanded again. The first batch of units in the 545 MW expansion project of Mile West Wind Power Plant, which is under the general contracting of China Power Construction Corporation, have been successfully connected to the grid for power generation, marking a critical milestone in the project construction.

The project has been selected for the provincial key list

The 545MW expansion project of Mile West Wind Farm is the second phase of the project and is the only wind power project selected for the 2026 key project list in Yunnan Province. The first batch of grid connected capacity is 180000 kilowatts. The project is led by Kunming Institute of China Electric Power Construction Corporation as the EPC general contractor, and undertaken by Water and Electricity Sixth Bureau.

Maitreya's greatest connection began with the first phase of the project. In 2023, the Maitreya West Phase I wind power project under the general contracting of China Power Construction Corporation will achieve full capacity grid connection. The 6.7 MW wind turbines used in the project are the largest single unit capacity of mountain wind power in China at that time, and also the largest wind power project in Southwest China that has been put into operation and installed.

The 545 MW project for this expansion will install a total of 79 units of 5.56 MW and 17 units of 6.25 MW wind turbines. The site is divided into three major areas: north, south, and central, stretching approximately 80 kilometers from north to south, with an altitude range of 1550 to 2250 meters. After full capacity operation, the Mile West Phase I expansion project and the Shidongshan project will jointly form a million kilowatt mountain wind power cluster with a total installed capacity of nearly 1.3 million kilowatts.

Solving construction difficulties in mountainous areas

96 wind turbines were deployed on the undulating ridges, and each operation had to compete head-on with complex terrain. The wind turbine locations in the central area are scattered, and the crack prevention standards for large volume concrete pouring are strict. The project team seized the construction window period to promote parallel flow operations, and safely and high-quality completed the pouring of the 42 foundations in the central area.

The project adopts the process of using unmanned aerial vehicles to lay out traction ropes and tensioning machines to set up collection lines, allowing the wires to be laid out in the air, crossing mountains, forests, and highways, and successfully connecting 58.385 kilometers of overhead lines and 20.5 kilometers of cable lines. The construction team conducted a pre survey of every risk point, and implemented one-way road closure control and dedicated personnel monitoring during the transportation process of oversized large items such as main transformer tower blades on mountain roads and cliff bends, to ensure the smooth delivery of each equipment to the corresponding point.

Clean electricity empowers green development

After the project is fully put into operation, the annual power generation will exceed 1.3 billion kilowatt hours, saving about 400000 tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 1.11 million tons per year. Keywords: Maitreya West Wind Power, Unit Grid Connection, Mountain Wind Power Cluster

From the first phase of setting a single machine record with a 6.7MW wind turbine in the mountains, to the second phase relying on a cluster scale of nearly 1.3 million kilowatts to reshape the southwest mountain wind power map, every expansion of Mile West is a coherent answer to China Power Construction's design leadership and construction capabilities in the field of mountain wind power, continuously injecting green energy into the optimization of regional energy structure.Editor/Huang jiali