UREC energetically participates in development of hydropower resources at home and abroad and dedicates to foster concentrically diversified business mode that takes investment, construction and operation management in hydropower projects as backbone work and has invested in some hydropower projects as share-controller or share-participant.

Since Myanmar is a country seriously short of electricity, UREC has built up around 20 power stations for Myanmar since 1989 yet still cannot satisfy the country’s requirement of electricity. Therefore, resorting on the eximious natural conditions of Shweli River, Shweli River Hydropower Station was placed in the development schedule of Ministry of Electric Power. From 1996 to 2001, UREC had investigated and explored at the site of Shweli River and formed a large amount of materials for Myanmar Government’s reference. In February 2002, Chairman of Myanmar instructed that Shweli River Hydropower Station should be constructed by UREC as soon as possible.

On the above support and working basis, UREC has decided that its main development tasks must include three cascade hydropower projects on Shweli River Basin in the Union of Myanmar with total installed capacity of 2000MW. The construction of Shweli (1) hydropower project (600MW) was completed in 2009 and its first turbine-generator unit became to generate electricity in 2008.

The installed capacity of Shweli (1) hydropower project is 600MW (6×100MW) with the annual average generating capacity of 403.3 million Kilowatthour. The annual available generating time is 6722 hours and the generating electricity can reach 174 thousand KW. The station has been jointly executed by UREC and Yunnan Union Electricity Developing Company on the basis of BOT with the licensed operation period of 40 years. At present，Shweli (1) hydropower project has completed and put into use successfully.