On May 15, 2023, the dam of Pakistan's Sujijinari Hydropower Station (SK Hydropower Station) invested and constructed by China Energy China Gezhouba Overseas Investment Co., Ltd. was successfully capped, marking the basic completion of the main civil engineering in the first area of the project, which will be completed by the end of 2023 The water storage at the lower gate of the dam provides an important guarantee.

The dam is the core building of a hydropower project, and it undertakes the important tasks of water retention and flood discharge. The dam of the SK Hydropower Station is an asphalt concrete core rockfill dam with a crest elevation of 2,239.5 meters, a maximum dam height of 54.5 meters, a crest width of 10 meters, a crest length of 258.0 meters, and a total backfill volume of 1,896,100 cubic meters.

The SK hydropower project is one of the first list projects of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is the first of the Belt and Road Initiative. It is currently the largest greenfield hydropower investment project overseas by Chinese companies, and has received great attention from the governments of China and Pakistan and all sectors of society. The hydropower project is located on the Kunha River in the Mansehra area of Khyber-Pashtun Province in northwest Pakistan. It is a high-head, long-tunnel diversion power station with a total investment of 1.962 billion US dollars. Install 4 impact units with a total installed capacity of 884 MW. The main structure includes dams, diversion tunnels, and main workshops. The project broke ground on December 31, 2016 and is scheduled to be put into operation in 2024. After completion, it can provide 3.212 billion kWh of clean electricity every year, which will reduce Pakistan's dependence on non-renewable resources, alleviate the serious power shortage situation in Pakistan's power grid, and promote high-quality economic and social development in Pakistan.

As of now, the overall construction progress of SK Hydropower Station is about 88.5% complete. Among them, the backfilling of the dam body in the dam area has been completed; the diversion tunnel has been fully connected, and 86.4% of the lining has been completed; the civil construction of the factory building and switch station has been basically completed; the project is in the process of installing electromechanical gold junctions, steel linings for shafts, and installations for units.Editor/Ma Xue