When the Construction of the Three Gorges Project of the Yangtze River began that year, a relatively grand groundbreaking ceremony was held, including power transmission and transformation projects, reservoir migration, and hub projects such as barrage dams, navigable buildings and hydropower stations, from the first proposal in 1918 to the trial opening of the Three Gorges ship lift in 2016, the time spanned nearly a hundred years!
China's Three Gorges Dam and Itaipu Hydropower Station, who has the stronger power generation capacity?
Let's start with the world's second-largest Itaipu hydropower station, which is on the border between Paraguay and Brazil, and is also jointly built by these two countries, whether it is a generating unit or a power generation, it is actually evenly distributed. The itaipu hydropower station has a dam length of 7,744 meters and an artificial lake storage capacity of 29 billion cubic meters, so the entire construction process took 16 years and an input cost of more than 17 billion US dollars, which attracted the world's attention when it was completed in 1991.
From the perspective of installed capacity data, the total installed capacity of Itaipu Hydropower Station is 14 million kilowatts, and the average power generation capacity for many years is 90 billion kWh, which is composed of 20 700,000 kW generating units, and it reached 94.86 billion kWh in 2008. However, as mentioned earlier, since it is a hydropower station jointly built by the two countries, the power generation is naturally distributed in an equally divided mode, so that the electricity obtained by each country is relatively limited.
Looking at our Three Gorges Dam, as early as July 4, 2012, the Three Gorges Hydropower Station became the world's largest hydropower station, because the last hydropower unit was officially put into operation on this day, which means that the installed capacity of the Three Gorges Hydropower Station has added up to 22.5 million kilowatts!
The location of these hydropower units is behind the Three Gorges Dam, if you want to compare the installed capacity, the Three Gorges Dam can be much higher than the Itaipu Hydropower Station mentioned earlier, there is no doubt that the size of the installed capacity, to a great extent, determines the size of the power generation capacity, otherwise you have more water resources will not help, the so-called "work to do good, must first use its tools"!
In addition to the size of the scale, on the highest annual power generation of a single power station, the position of the Three Gorges Dam in the world is also unshakable, why do you say so?
We can look at the power generation of the Three Gorges Dam in previous years:
In some years, the Three Gorges Dam does only have more than 80 billion kWh of power generation, but this is not the power that does not come out, people who know about the Three Gorges Project should know that the purpose of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam is not only to generate electricity, at present, the world's largest comprehensive benefit of the water conservancy hub is the Three Gorges Project, in addition to power generation, it also plays a huge role in flood control and drought control and shipping.
Especially in terms of flood control, the storage capacity of the Three Gorges Dam is 39.3 billion cubic meters, of which 22.15 billion cubic meters are flood control storage capacity. Even though the inflow into the reservoir reached 75,000 cubic meters per second in 2020, the Three Gorges Dam still resisted the largest flood peak since the construction of the reservoir through the discharge capacity of 11 "deep flood holes", unlike the Itaipu hydropower station, which is used to generate electricity.
However, if you want to talk about the single power station with the highest annual power generation, the first position is still the Three Gorges Dam! In 2018, it exceeded 100 billion kWh of power generation, and in 2020, it set a record of 111.8 billion kWh of power generation, that is to say, the Three Gorges Hydropower Station not only created a new record in the world, but also refreshed its own record after 2 years, which was completed under the condition of ensuring shipping capacity and exerting flood prevention and drought control benefits!
The Three Gorges Project invested more than 200 billion yuan, where did it cost?
It is undeniable that the investment in the Three Gorges Project is huge, and judging from the audit results published in 2013, the investment cost of the Three Gorges Project exceeds 200 billion, of which the hub project accounts for more than 80 billion, the power transmission and transformation project accounts for more than 30 billion, and the immigrants also account for more than 80 billion.
The Three Gorges Dam was intercepted by the river in 1997, reaching a water storage depth of 135 meters in 2003, the first units were connected to the grid for power generation, and the double-line five-level locks were opened within the planned time, and it entered the initial operation one year ahead of schedule in 2006 (at this time the reservoir's water storage depth had reached 156 meters).
By 2008, 26 units distributed on both sides of the strait with a single capacity of 700,000 kilowatts had also begun to be put into operation, which was another year earlier than expected.
Although the three gorges project is extremely difficult, we can see from the timeline of the project construction that in fact, many projects have been completed ahead of schedule, including power transmission and transformation projects, which were also completed one year earlier than the preliminary design and put into operation in 2007.
It may be unclear why the cost of reservoir migration is so high. In fact, the main reason is that the number of immigrants involved is too large, 1.2455 million people need to leave the place where their ancestors have lived, and the area of relocated houses exceeds 40 million square meters, including more than 1,600 local industrial and mining enterprises.
How many years will the Three Gorges Dam last? If it expires, how can the southern region continue to prevent flooding on the Yangtze River?
After entering the flood season every year, especially when the super flood peak comes, some people will indeed worry about the use of the Three Gorges Dam, but the Three Gorges Project, which has an input cost of more than 200 billion yuan, is really not so fragile. The architectural structure of the Three Gorges Project can also be seen, like the dam is made of concrete pouring, which is a typical gravity dam, with a dam top elevation of 185 meters, even if it is a once-in-a-century flood, it can cope with it.
Shortly after the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, some American experts did say that this water conservancy and hydropower project only had a 50-year lifespan, but it was refuted by mainland experts at the first time!
Moreover, from the perspective of the design specifications of water conservancy and hydropower projects, the Three Gorges Dam is a "Class 1 water building", and although its service life cannot be guaranteed to reach hundreds of years, it cannot be only a few decades, and the service life under normal circumstances is more than 150 years.
In fact, the engineers of the Three Gorges Dam do not ignore it after the completion of construction, but will also inspect the situation of the dam facilities, and where there is a small problem, it will be repaired in time. Moreover, even when the Three Gorges Dam needs to be rebuilt, the technology at that time will be more advanced than it is today, and the new Three Gorges Dam will inevitably have stronger flood control, drought resistance, power generation and navigation capabilities, so you don't have to worry too much about this problem.