Which is the largest hydropower station in the world?

The largest hydropower station in the world is the Three Gorges Hydropower Station.

The Three Gorges Hydropower Station is the Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project on the Yangtze River, also known as the Three Gorges Project. The Xiling Gorge section of the Yangtze River in Yichang City, Hubei Province, China, and the Gezhouba Hydropower Station downstream form a cascade power station. It is the largest hydropower station in the world and the largest engineering project ever constructed in China.

The many issues such as immigration and environment caused by it have always been accompanied by huge controversy from the moment it was started. The construction of the Three Gorges Hydropower Station was approved by the National People's Congress of China in 1992. Construction officially started in 1994. Water storage and power generation began on the afternoon of June 1, 2003, and it was completed in 2009.

Hydropower station characteristics

The Three Gorges Hydropower Station has a dam elevation of 185 meters, a water storage elevation of 175 meters, a reservoir length of 2,335 meters, and 32 hydropower units with a single capacity of 700,000 kilowatts. The last hydropower unit of the Three Gorges Hydropower Station was put into operation on July 4, 2012. The Three Gorges Hydropower Station with an installed capacity of 22.4 million kilowatts has become the world's largest hydropower station and clean energy production base on July 4, 2012.

The Three Gorges Dam is a concrete gravity dam that can withstand a once-in-10,000-year flood. The maximum discharge flow can reach 100,000 cubic meters per second. The entire project required approximately 134 million cubic meters of earth and rock excavation and filling, approximately 28 million cubic meters of concrete pouring, and consumed 593,000 tons of steel.