Volta: where is the largest reservoir in the world

In the small African country of Ghana, the largest reservoir in the world is located, which covers an area of 8,480 square meters. km This grandiose man-made lake was built on the little-known Volta River, which carries its waters into the Gulf of Guinea of the Atlantic Ocean.

Such a grand reservoir, as is often the case, was formed for the sake of obtaining cheap hydropower. The construction of the dam with a length of 660 meters and a height of 111 meters was carried out from 1961 to 1965. After the country gained independence, the leadership of Ghana decided that the basis of the economy should not be cocoa cultivation, but industrial production, in particular aluminum smelting.

A dam built in a narrow gorge blocked the Volta riverbed and provided the Akosombo hydroelectric power station with the required amount of water needed for turbine operation. This hydroelectric power station has a capacity of 1020 MW, most of which is allocated for the needs of the aluminum plant in the city of Tema.

The reservoir occupies 3.6% of the area of Ghana and has a very winding coastline with a length of more than 7,000 kilometers. The maximum depth of the Volta reservoir is 80 meters, but the average is about 18 meters. Before filling the reservoir from the territory to be flooded, nearly 80 thousand inhabitants were resettled.

It should be clarified that Volta is the largest in area of all channel reservoirs of the planet, that is, reservoirs that formed after the construction of the dam in the river channel. If we talk about reservoirs in the broad sense of the word, the most extensive in terms of occupied area are the reservoir lakes that formed after the construction of dams on the rivers flowing from them. Such reservoirs include, for example, Lake Victoria in Africa or Lake Baikal in Russia.