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China's Three Gorges Project will start generating power in August next year, according to Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corporation.

The company announced recently that the No. 2 and No. 5 generating units will start production first, followed by the No. 3 unit in two months and the No. 6 unit in three months. The four units will yield a total of 5.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2003.

Located in Yichang, central China's Hubei Province, the Three Gorges Project is to have 26 units installed, each with a 700,000-kw capacity, by 2009. It will be the world's largest hydropower project with a total capacity of 18.2 million kw and an annual output of 84.68 billion kwh.

Hydropower specialists predict the power generation capacity of three Gorges Project would remain unchallenged internationally for many years to come.

The specialists reckon it would take 50 million tons of raw coal or 25 million tons of crude oil to produce the same amount of energy as the annual output of the Three Gorges Project. Thus the project would avoid the emission of one million to two million tons of sulfur dioxide, 300,000 to 400,000 tons of nitrogen oxide,10,000 tons of carbon monoxide and 150,000 tons of soot into the air annually.

Construction of the project started in 1993 and will be finished in 2010.