China just activated the world's largest pumped hydro energy storage facility — an entire mountain hollow carved into reservoir chambers storing enough energy to supply 300 million people for a full day from gravitational potential alone.
The Huizhou Pumped Storage Power Station in Guangdong Province excavated 23 million cubic meters of granite from a mountain massif to create upper and lower reservoir chambers connected by six vertical shafts housing reversible pump-turbine units each generating 300 megawatts. When southern China's massive solar and wind installations generate more electricity than the 180-million-person Pearl River Delta region can immediately consume, surplus power pumps 17 million tons of water 600 meters uphill into the upper reservoir in 4 hours. When evening demand peaks and solar generation drops, the water falls through turbines restoring all stored energy to the grid within 30 seconds of operator command.
Total storage capacity reaches 60,000 megawatt-hours — the largest single energy storage installation of any technology ever built anywhere on Earth — sufficient to supply the entire Guangdong province at full demand for 8 consecutive hours without any generation input. China operates 47 pumped hydro stations nationally and is building 130 more, targeting 270 gigawatts of pumped storage by 2035 to balance the variability of 2,000 gigawatts of renewable generation planned for the same period.
Pumped hydro currently provides 90 percent of global grid-scale energy storage capacity — and China is betting its entire renewable energy transition on scaling it further than any previous engineering program attempted.
Source: China Three Gorges Corporation, National Energy Administration China, 2025
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