The Three Gorges Hydropower Complex’s cascade dispatching communication center operates one of the largest, most comprehensive, and technologically advanced hydrological telemetry systems among Chinese hydropower enterprises. It efficiently collects and analyzes various real-time meteorological and hydrological data from 1,500 hydrological stations and over 20,000 regional automatic meteorological stations. Its monitoring and forecasting scope covers nearly 80% of the Yangtze River’s upper reaches, and it can collect data from the main control stations as well as the controlling reservoirs within 10 minutes. The completion of this system is the result of CTG’s ten years of unrelenting research around the development of the smart Yangtze River.

The total flood control capacity of the six cascade reservoirs in the Yangtze River’s main stream is 37.6 billion cubic meters, accounting for more than 50% of the total flood control capacity of the reservoirs in the Yangtze River basin included in the joint dispatching. Therefore, scientific dispatching is crucial to ensuring the effectiveness of the cascade reservoir group. In 2020, the maximum flood peak of the Three Gorges reservoir reached 75,000 cubic meters per second, marking the largest flood peak since its construction. This peak far exceeded the previous high of 63,300 cubic meters per second recorded in 1998, while the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River remained unscathed.

Since the Three Gorges Project began storing water in 2003, it has consistently provided timely water supply and replenishment for the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River during the dry season annually. As of June 2022, it has regulated and replenished a cumulative total of 333.2 billion cubic meters of water in the middle and lower reaches, representing the majority of the total replenishment in the past 10 years. In the past four years, the Three Gorges reservoir has replenished water downstream for a total of nearly 700 days, with a total replenishment of about 90 billion cubic meters. This has increased the downstream flow by an average of about 1,700 cubic meters per second during dry periods, effectively enhancing navigational conditions in the middle and lower reaches of the river and ensuring a reliable water supply for production, living, and ecology along the river.