The Three Gorges Dam in China is the most powerful power station on Earth. What is its installed generating capacity in megawatts?
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Answer
About 22,500 MW
Its reservoir holds so much water so high above sea level that, by NASA's calculation, filling it lengthened the day by about 0.06 microseconds.
How to estimate it
Hydropower equals water density × gravity × flow × drop. The turbines are sized for summer flows of about 25,000 cubic metres per second, and the water falls about 100 m. 1,000 × 10 × 25,000 × 100 = 25 billion watts. Turbines and generators convert about 90 percent of that: 22.5 billion watts, or 22,500 MW. The installed capacity is indeed about 22,500 MW.
Source: China Three Gorges Corporation; US Energy Information Administration
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