10 Largest Dam in the World That You Must Visit

10) Three Gorges Dam

The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, central China.

Since 2012, The Three Gorges Dam has been the world’s largest power station in terms of installed capacity (22,500 MW). In 2018, annual electricity generation was 101.6 TWh, which is 20 times more than the Hoover Dam. The main generators weigh about 6,000 tonnes each and are designed to produce more than 700 MW of power. The dam catalyzed improved upstream wastewater treatment around Chongqing and its suburban areas. The NASA scientists calculated that the shift of water mass stored by the dams would increase the total length of the Earth’s day by 0.06 microseconds and make the Earth slightly more round in the middle and flat on the poles. The most important function of the dam is to control flooding, which is a major problem for the seasonal river of the Yangtze.

 

Three Gorges Dam Statistics

• Height: 181 m (594 ft).
• Length: 2,335 m (7,661 ft).
• Width (crest): 40 m (131 ft).
• Width (base): 115 m (377 ft).
• Dam volume: 27.2 million m3 (35.6 million cu yd).
• Spillway capacity: 116,000 m3/s (4,100,000 cu ft/s).
• Turbines: 32 × 700 MW 2 × 50 MW Francis-type.
• Installed capacity: 22,500 MW.

 

How to reach

• The dam is near the Sandouping town in the Yiling District of Yichang prefecture-level city in the Chinese province of Hubei.