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Benmore Dam

Waimate District, New Zealand

The 1378th largest power station in the world

540 MW · Capacity

Benmore Dam is the largest dam within the Waitaki power scheme, located in the Canterbury Region of New Zealand's South Island. There are eight other power stations in the Waitaki Power Scheme. The dam is the largest earth-fill (zoned embankment dam) water-retaining structure in New Zealand. Its core is low permeability clay material, supported by two massive shoulders of river gravel. Lake Benmore has a volume of 1.25 billion cubic metres, about 1.5 times as much water as Wellington Harbour. The dam's spillway can cope with over 6,000 cubic metres of water per second, about 20 times the mean river flow.

Power station data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).

More power stations in New Zealand

  1. Manapouri Hydroelectric Power Station800 MW
  2. Project Hayes630 MW
  3. New Plymouth Power Station600 MW
  4. Stratford Power Station577 MW
  5. Otahuhu Power Station404 MW

Other large power stations worldwide

  1. Bui Dam · Ghana1,440 GW
  2. Western Green Energy Hub · Australia50 GW
  3. Gujarat Hybrid Renewable Energy Park · India30 GW
  4. Three Gorges Dam · China22.5 GW
  5. Baihetan Dam · China16 GW
  6. Itaipu Dam · Paraguay14 GW
  7. Xiluodu Dam · China13.86 GW
  8. Belo Monte Dam · Brazil11 GW