The Oroville Dam is really a crazy undertaking when you consider: 1) it primarily serves to move water all the way from north of Sacramento to San Joaquin Valley / Southern California, 2) despite generating some amount of electricity, it actually consumes 3/4 of that energy just in transporting the water (over mountain ranges). More generally, the State Water Project (of which the dam is a part) is the largest electricity consumer in the state of California.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-California-Natural-Histo... (kind of "dry", but extremely informative)