Many people know that the Three Gorges is the largest hydropower station in my country with a storage capacity of 39.3 billion cubic meters, the largest in my country. According to data from the built reservoirs, the Three Gorges Reservoir can only rank around 25th in the world.

Many people know that Three Gorges is the largest hydropower station in my country with the largest installed capacity. The storage capacity has reached 39.3 billion cubic meters, which is the largest in my country. But do you know the largest reservoir in the world? Which is the storage capacity of the Three Gorges ranks compared to it? According to the data of the built reservoirs, Sanxia Reservoir can only rank around 25th in the world. The Irving Waterfall Reservoir , which I want to talk about today, is the world's largest reservoir. It is located in the Central African country Uganda and reservoir capacity reached 204.8 billion cubic meters, 5 times more than the Three Gorges Reservoir .

Irving Waterfall Reservoir

A reservoir of such a large size must be very high. On the contrary, the Irving Waterfall Reservoir has a maximum dam height of only 31 meters, which is far less than the 185-meter dam height of the Three Gorges. What makes the Irving Falls Reservoir have such a huge storage capacity?

dam height comparison

First of all, I would like to share with you a little knowledge about how the library content is calculated. Generally speaking, the more intuitive calculation method is to multiply the surface area of ​​the reservoir by the average water depth of the reservoir. Of course, the average water depth is not easy to calculate. It is generally proportional to the dam height of the reservoir. Reservoirs formed by mountainous rivers are generally narrow but long, such as the Three Gorges Reservoir. Due to the wide terrain, the reservoirs in the plain area are often much larger when building dams. This is the case with the Irving Waterfall Reservoir. It makes full use of the plain area upstream of the dam, so its reservoir surface area It is far beyond the Three Gorges Reservoir, and even covers up the lack of its dam height.

From the satellite map, on the African continent, the Irving Falls Reservoir is very conspicuous. Its dam is located on the Nile 3 kilometers downstream of the lake. It uses concrete gravity dam . It was built in 1954 and has a short length. The height is not high, and the scale is really not large. But what is incredible is that the lake formed upstream of the dam is bizarre, reaching 70,000 km².

Irving Falls Reservoir Satellite Map

Thanks to Lake Victoria . Before the dam was built, Lake Victoria was already here. You should know that the original storage capacity of Lake Victoria was 2700 billion cubic meters. After the dam was built, it was just the lake surface. It raised a certain height, but people are quite moral. When calculating the reservoir capacity, deducting the original storage capacity of Lake Victoria, only calculated that the construction of the dam brought about a storage capacity gain of 204.8 billion cubic meters, which is known as the world's number one It's worthy of its name.

Irving Waterfall Reservoir storage capacity diagram

Let’s say that, what’s the use of storage capacity? The Irving Waterfall Reservoir has a low drop and small runoff, and its installed capacity is only 150,000 kilowatts. In addition to being able to raise more fish, the overall benefits are still far inferior to our Three Gorges. Of course, some people also believe that the Irving Waterfall Reservoir is a bit opportunistic and cannot be called an artificial reservoir. But I think it is not that important whether it is first or not.