An independently developed relay protection system has been put into use at the Xiaowan Hydropower Station on the Lancang River in Southwest China's Yunnan province on Thursday, China Central Television reported.

Four systems involving computer monitoring, governor, excitation and relay protection are the core control systems of hydropower stations and the important basis for ensuring the stability of units and power grids.

China Huaneng Group Co Ltd cooperated with other companies to develop the home-grown relay protection system, marking an important technical breakthrough in hydropower control systems.

Chinese technicians carried out lots of work on the adaptation, comparison and research on key hardware and software to make breakthroughs in the bottleneck technical problems, realizing the 100 percent home-grown hydropower control system.

They have made 34 major technological innovations and 17 key technologies to fill the domestic gap, providing a fully autonomous and controllable "domestic brain" for China's clean energy hydropower development.