Domestic & Overseas

A video conference was held in NWE on December 29, 2020, giving a stage presentation on the “Smart Batoka” program. Wu Zhangjian, director of POWERCHINA Informatization Management Department, experts from POWERCHINA Huadong and POWERCHINA Zhongnan, Dassault Systems and ATOZ Group, as well as Li Pujian, vice president of NWE and relevant staff from NWE Overseas Business Department / International Engineering Company and Digital & Wisdom Engineering Division attended the meeting.

Batoka Gorge Hydro-Electric Scheme (BGHES) is located in the Batoka Canyon of the Zambezi River at the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe in southern Africa. The dam site is about 47km downstream of the Victoria Fall Power Station. The basin area at the dam site is 508,000 km2, the average annual runoff at the dam site is 3,563,600 million m³, the average annual discharge is 1,130 m3/s, the Full Supply Level (FSL) of the reservoir is EL.757m, corresponding to a storage capacity of 1,300 million m³, and the Minimum Operating Level (MOL) is EL.722.5m, corresponding to a storage capacity of 627 million m³. The installed capacity of BGHES is 2,400MW, and the average annual energy output is 10,093GWh. The dam crest is at EL.762m, and the maximum dam height is 175m. Six Francis turbines will be installed at the powerhouse on each bank with a unit capacity of 200MW.

The “Smart Batoka” program connects closely the development needs of BGHES with various advanced techniques such as BIM, Big Data, IoT, AI, etc. according to the development background and the actual conditions of BGHES, in fully response to the requirements on project digitization and intelligence by the state and POWERCHINA. In the meeting, the Digital & Wisdom Engineering Division of NWE introduced the program from all sides, and the experts exchanged the views and discussed the technical details with respect to the integration interface between the design platform and different sub-business systems, various types of data flow transmission, coding system for integration of design and construction, remote network deployment, unattended smart power plants, etc.

Wu Zhangjian gave a high praise to the “Smart Batoka” program, commenting that the program  fully reflected the requirement of POWERCHINA on digital transformation of enterprises, innovatively integrated the advanced systematic engineering theories with traditional hydropower engineering works, which will manage the design and construction works in a precise and intelligent way. He suggested that the program needs to be further improved in terms of investment and operation, so as to fulfill the intelligent application of BGHES in the full life cycle of FEPCTO.

Li Pujian made a request for the next work stage and encouraged the staff involved to work harder and take the “Smart Batoka” program as an opportunity to help NWE to achieve digital transformation.