December 26, 1999 (Winter Spring April 19), the Ertan Hydropower Station, in western China's largest hydropower station is fully completed and commissioned.

1999 12, 26, 550,000 kilowatts, at the western part of the country's largest hydropower --- Ertan Hydropower Station unit is completed and put into power generation. Hundreds of millions of years, has been defiant, the rolling east of the Yalong River water, becoming a strong current input to the millions of households.
Ertan Hydropower Station is the country "85" key construction projects, is in western China since the founding of the largest and one of the technology is the most complex, the most intensive investment in infrastructure projects. Ertan Hydropower Station overflow by 240-meter-high concrete hyperbolic arch dam and huge underground factories and other buildings. Power plants to install single capacity of 550,000 kilowatts of hydro-generating unit, the total installed capacity of 3.3 million kilowatts, annual power output of 17 billion kwh, the total investment of 28.47 billion yuan. (History cn)
Ertan Hydropower Station as early as in the early 1970s to carry out exploration and design, power plant main project officially started in September 1991. Construction projects identified in the early milestones have been achieved. The Ertan Project of the early running and monitoring data show that the state-of-the-art engineering design, construction quality is excellent, the engineering performance met the design requirements. Ertan Hydropower Station construction process,
fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the various contractors, equipment suppliers, supervising engineer of this involves more than 40 countries around the world, hundreds of projects, thousands of people participate in large-scale construction projects than the contract duration of 181 days in advance. Ertan project's success marks the level of China's hydropower construction has scaled a new height, Sichuan and Chongqing to bid farewell to the years of power shortage situation, and laid the foundation for the economic development of the next century.