Shilongba Hydropower Station No. 1 was founded in 1908 (the 34th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty) by Kunming businessman Wang Xiaozhai who recruited business stocks and raised funds. The diversion canal is 1478 meters long, with a height difference of 15 meters and a flow rate of 4 cubic meters/second. Two hydroelectric generator units with a single unit capacity of 240 kilowatts ordered from Siemens of Germany are installed. A 22 kV transmission line is used to transmit electricity to the power station 32 kilometers away. Kunming City provides electricity. In 1932, the first factory was expanded and a 720-kilowatt unit was added.
In 1909, Wang Xiaozhai, the son of Wang Chi, the largest merchant in Yunnan and the "King of Money", contacted 19 business colleagues and requested the establishment of a joint-stock company to deal with the electrical industry. The government agreed, and Li Jingxi, the last governor of Yunnan and Guizhou in the Qing Dynasty, approved: "From now on, outsiders are not allowed to come to Yunnan to run electricity for twenty-five years."
On the evening of May 28, 1912 (April 12 of the lunar calendar), it cost a lot of money to A 500,000-silver-dollar hydropower plant was built, and two units customized from Siemens of Germany officially generated electricity. People from all walks of life in Kunming gathered at Cuihu Haixin Pavilion to celebrate the turn-on of the Shilongba Hydropower Station. At that time, citizens were still relatively superstitious, and few people installed and used electric lights. The power plant promoted "free installation of lamp holders", and then electricity gradually became popular in Kunming. The first hydroelectric power station in China (Mainland) was named "Yaolong Electric Company Shilongba Power Station".
In 1935, the two initially installed small 240-kilowatt units were dismantled and a second 720-kilowatt unit was added, bringing the final scale of the first plant to 1,440 kilowatts. Since the first plant only utilized a drop of 15 meters, which was only half of the total drop in the river section, between 1924 and 1939, the tail water of the first plant was used and the drop of 15 meters was used again to build the second and third plants successively, with installed capacities of 1000 kW and 480 kW. After thirty or forty years of construction, expansion and renovation, the Shilongba Hydropower Station had a total installed capacity of 2920 kilowatts by 1949.
Shilongba Hydropower Station After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Shilongba Hydropower Station was completely transformed: a new factory building was built, and the original two-level development was changed to one-level development. Seven small units were dismantled and replaced by two units with a maximum single capacity of 3,000 kilowatts, bringing the total installed capacity of the plant to 6,000 kilowatts.
In July 1950, Yaolong Company merged with Kunhu Power Plant and established the "Yunnan Provincial Electric Power Industry Administration" to uniformly manage the province's power industry.
In 1954, the new factory building was built and the first Swiss-made unit was installed and put into production.
On July 1, 1958, the second Chinese-made generating unit generated electricity. The renovated power station utilizes a height difference of 31 meters and a flow rate of 24 cubic meters per second. It is still in operation today.
On May 25, 2006, Shilongba Hydropower Station was approved by the State Council to be included in the sixth batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
In July 2009, the Shilongba Hydropower Station was renamed "Huadian Yunnan Power Generation Co., Ltd. Shilongba Power Plant".