The Wangfuzhou Hydro Project is the tenth stage in the 15-tier cascade development of the main stream of the Han River, situated in Laohekou City, Hubei Province, approximately 30 kilometers downstream from the Danjiangkou Hydro Project. Serving as a counter-regulation reservoir for the Danjiangkou Reservoir—the core water source of the South-to-North Water Diversion Middle Route Project—Wangfuzhou Reservoir is a key hydraulic engineering structure integrated into the joint dispatching of water projects across the Yangtze River Basin.
For many years, Hubei Han River Wangfuzhou Hydropower Co., Ltd. (Wangfuzhou Company), the management entity of the Wangfuzhou Hydro Project, has continuously enhanced its operational management standards, striving to become an industry benchmark in reservoir standardization. In line with directives from the Ministry of Water Resources, the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission, and the Han River Group Company, and building on its standardized management foundation, the company has integrated specialized applications with new technologies, methods, and equipment. By September 2025, it aims to achieve pilot construction targets, including the basic realization of “four-comprehensive” management, further refinement of the “four-system” framework, significant improvement in “four-prevention” capabilities, and the solid implementation of “four-management” tasks. These efforts have effectively ensured project safety and markedly elevated the modernization level of reservoir operation and management. The company has also developed distinctive, replicable, and scalable experience in areas such as comprehensive sensing systems, “four-prevention” operational applications, institutional mechanisms, reservoir and dam area management, high-tech applications and digital empowerment, intelligent termite control, and the “six-mechanism” risk management system for safety production.
Wangfuzhou Reservoir is a daily regulation reservoir with a limited storage capacity of only 0.028 billion cubic meters. Its construction model, which created a “lake on the plains,” pioneered the technology of building low-head power stations on highly permeable sand foundations. To address the challenge of limited storage regulation capacity, the project integrates hydrodynamic and flood forecasting models, sharing hydrological data from the Danjiangkou Reservoir and rainfall radar data to accurately predict inflow rates. Leveraging an intelligent operation and decision-support system for real-time response, it implements precise water level control strategies and establishes a closed-loop gate operation system. This approach has successfully resolved conflicts between project safety and economic operation, offering a replicable model for similar future projects.
The reservoir features a broad river channel and complex terrain. With an 18-kilometer-long earth-rock dam and spillway foundations primarily composed of Quaternary loose overburden and Tertiary weak clastic rock, Wangfuzhou Company has adopted tailored, multi-pronged measures to ensure comprehensive project safety. A benchmark in geotechnical membrane anti-seepage technology, the project was the first in China to deploy large-scale geomembrane lining, using composite structures totaling over 1.07 million square meters. This significantly reduced seepage risks, earning recognition as a national demonstration project for geosynthetic materials and setting a new standard for anti-seepage solutions in earth-rock dams. The company’s safety record of over 8,500 days further validates the technology’s reliability and cost-effectiveness.
An innovative management system for the long embankment has been established, featuring an integrated “sky-ground-water-engineering” monitoring network that enables precise reservoir management. Through weekly full-coverage inspections, real-time monitoring via 376 video points, and continuous surveillance of drainage ditch water levels and flows, a full-chain “monitoring–warning–response–feedback” process ensures safe project operation.
Following the commissioning of the South-to-North Water Diversion Middle Route Project, changes in water temperature, flow, and topography led to explosive growth of Elodea in the Wangfuzhou reservoir area. This “aquatic weed disaster” once caused significant power generation losses and posed safety risks to trash rack metal structures. The excessive growth of submerged plants, primarily the invasive Elodea species, also threatened the aquatic ecological environment of the middle and lower reaches of the Han River. Since 2019, Wangfuzhou Company has conducted ongoing research and developed an innovative “ecological regulation + preemptive clearing + smart monitoring” tripartite control model. Ecological regulation involves multi-year trials coordinated with upstream authorities to adjust river flow, velocity, and water levels, altering the growth conditions for submerged plants. A daily cleaning mechanism using specialized vessels effectively controls floating debris, ensuring project safety. Continuous monitoring has shown a dramatic reduction in Elodea biomass from 48,000 tons in 2019 to 54 tons in 2025, and its distribution area shrank from 11.6 square kilometers to 0.013 square kilometers, achieving sustained controllability. Related technologies have received the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission Science and Technology Award and two invention patents, contributing to significant improvements in the basin’s water environment and ecological coordination.
Wangfuzhou Company has positioned digital transformation as the core driver of its matrix development, applying domestically produced equipment, intelligent system clusters, and comprehensive data integration to lay the foundation for a modern reservoir. In the construction of the dam safety monitoring automation system, the company pioneered the use of integrated settlement-inclination sensors in China, replacing manual observations and enabling real-time data collection on internal deformation of the earth-rock dam. This innovation filled a gap in the country’s settlement and inclination monitoring capabilities. The intelligent video-based flood warning and broadcast system for the spillway covers downstream management areas, supporting dual-trigger warnings via water level linkage and AI-based intrusion detection, with full-process automated traceability. The smart inspection system for the reservoir and dam area, accessible via computer and mobile terminals, enables Beidou positioning check-ins, real-time reporting, and paperless closed-loop management, significantly improving inspection quality and efficiency. This system received a top innovation award and sets a new benchmark for intelligent inspections in the industry.
A network of 376 cameras provides comprehensive coverage of production areas and vulnerable reservoir banks, ensuring seamless monitoring of key zones. The smart plant operation and decision-support system incorporates 1,508 intelligent alarm strategies, enabling early defect diagnosis, temperature prediction, and full monitoring coverage, which has boosted equipment reliability by over 30% and reduced operator workload by more than 50%. An automated termite monitoring and early warning system, integrated with years of manual control experience, allows real-time termite detection and alerts.
By consolidating DEM, DOM, oblique photography models, and BIM models of key structures, Wangfuzhou has built a 3D spatial data foundation. The platform integrates 12 information systems—including the digital twin of the Han River, the Han River Group safety management system, and the Wangfuzhou safety monitoring system—and supports decision-making with six professional models such as inflow forecasting, dam safety diagnostics, and gate operation control. This “1+2+12+N” reservoir operation and management matrix platform achieves dynamic display of “four-comprehensive” information, structured presentation of the “four-system” framework, closed-loop “four-prevention” flood dispatch, and “four-management” maintenance functions, establishing a national model for digital reservoir governance.