CHENGDU, April 15 (Xinhua) -- A photovoltaic (PV) project, aiming at reducing poverty, has gone into operation in a remote county in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

China's state energy giant State Power Investment Corporation Limited said Saturday that the project started to generate electricity in early April, benefitting more than 2,400 poor people.

Located in Hongyuan County in the Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba, the 20-megawatt solar power plant is capable of producing more than 26.24 million kilowatt-hours of electricity every year.

Local residents can use the electricity, and the surplus will be sold to electric power sectors, which is expected to help increase the income of each of those poor people by at least 1,000 yuan every year.

Sichuan launched a poverty alleviation program based on PV power system at the end of 2017. A total of 19 projects are planned to be built in 17 counties. The project in Hongyuan County is the first one which has been put into operation.