The Three Gorges Dam Project is the world’s largest hydropower complex project located in one of the three gorges of the Yangtze River: the Xilingxia Gorge in Hubei province, China. The dam’s name refers to the majestic limestone cliffs of the Qutang, Wu, and Xiling gorges, which stretch for about 200 kilometers from Fengjie. Construction of the controversial Three Gorges Dam began in 1994. Its first turbine was connected to the grid in 2003, with the final one was connected up in 2012. Made of concrete and steel, the dam is 2,335 m long and the top of the dam is 185 metres above sea level. The project used 27.2 million cubic metres of concrete , 463,000 tonnes of steel and moved about 102.6 million cubic metres of earth. A total of 1.3 million people had to be relocated from their homes.

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Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead, and is located near Boulder City, Nevada. Originally called Boulder Dam, this engineering marvel was re-named for Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States. In 1935, Hoover Dam was the largest in the world and although long since surpassed it is still an amazing structure and a marvel of engineering – a huge, curving wall of plain concrete 660 feet thick at the base and 726 feet high set between the vertical walls of Black Canyon, accompanied by strangely-angled pylons, cables, power generating plants and other machinery. Its 17 generators produce 4 to 5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. That\’s enough power to supply a half million homes for one year, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, the agency responsible for maintaining and operating Hoover Dam. By the end of 1992, upgrading on the dam’s massive generators increased the original nameplate capacity from 1,345 megawatts to slightly more than 2,000 megawatts.

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