Three Gorges Project delivers impressive performance in 2020 despite pandemic

The Three Gorges project, which manages the flow of water on China's Yangtze River, has delivered an impressive operation performance in 2020, as the world’s largest hydroelectric facility produced record electricity and coped with five major floods in an eventful year marked by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Three Gorges Dam, the world’s biggest hydropower plant in terms of installed capacity, generated 111.8 billion KW·h of electricity in 2020, setting a new world record, according to its owner and operator China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG).

The Three Gorges Reservoir replenished a total of 22.924 billion cubic meters of water to the lower reaches for 164 days in 2020.

Three Gorges Dam conducted eco-scheduling operation in late May, during which a total of 530 million eggs were spawned by fish at the cross sections of Chongqing, Jiangjin, Hubei and Yidu.

The dam successfully coped with five major floods during the flood season of 2020, during which the reservoir retained a cumulative 30.5 billion cubic meters of flood water, smashing the historical record.

In 2020, 39,446 ships passed through the Three Gorges ship lock, carrying a total of 137 million tons of cargo. The ship lift operated 2,318 times for the year, elevating 1,579 ships that carried over 30,849 passengers and 760,900 tons of freight.