THE THREE GORGES

The Three Gorges

The Three Gorges

Introduction

The dam of the Three Gorges is located on the river Yangtze in China. It is the hydroelectric plant world's largest, surpassing loosely to that of Itaipu on the Parana River which was relegated to second place and Guri (Venezuela) to third place. The dam construction began on 15 December 1994, and was considered to be prolonged over 19 years. On November 9 of 2001 it managed to open the river and in 2003 began operating the first set of generators. Since 2004 they settled a total of 2000 generator sets per year, to complete the work. On June 6, 2006, was demolished last embankment dam with enough explosives to demolish 400 buildings of 10 floors. It took 12 seconds to fall. It was completed on 30 October 2010. Nearly 2 million people were resettled mainly in new neighborhoods built in the city of Chongqing.

Description and Analysis

The dam stands on the banks of the city of Yichang, in the province of Hubei in central China. The future reservoir will be called Gorotkia, and can store 39,300 million m 3. It will have 32 turbines of 700 M W each, 14 installed on the north side of the dam, 12 on the south side of the dam and six underground totaling a capacity of 24,000 MW. In the original plans this single dam would be able to provide 10% of electricity demand China. However the growth in demand has been greater than expected and fully operational even if today would only be capable of providing energy to 3% of Chinese domestic consumption. This monumental work left under the water level to 19 cities and 322 villages, affecting nearly 2 million people and submerging about 630 km 2 area of Chinese territory.

The dam measured 2,309 meters in length and height 185 and includes a lock capable of handling vessels up to 3,000 tonnes. Since time immemorial, the river suffered massive flooding its banks ten years, and only in the twentieth century, as the Chinese authorities, 300,000 people died because of this phenomenon. The dam is designed to prevent these events and improve control of the river and to protect more than 15 million people living on its banks.

The Three Gorges Dam currently holds the title of the largest power generating dam in the world. Until recently, the larger the Itaipu Dam, located between Paraguay and Brazil, but today China dam generates power using 26 turbines, plus 8 units under construction (6 × 700 MW, 2 x 50 MW), each one of the existing operating units have a capacity of 700 MW, bringing total installed capacity of 18,200 MW (14,000 MW Itaipu). Over 2011 took place an extension reaching a capacity of 22,500 MW.

The Three Gorges has the largest total hydroelectric capacity of any dam, being capable of generating 22,500 megawatts (MW) of power when all 34 generators are in place; in comparison, the U.S. Hoover Dam on the Colorado River produces a little over 2,000 ...