Churchill Falls Generating Station
Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
The 46th largest power station in the world
The Churchill Falls Generating Station is a hydroelectric underground power station in Labrador, Canada. At 5,428 MW, it is the sixteenth largest in the world, and the second-largest in Canada, after the Robert-Bourassa generating station in northwestern Quebec. Rather than a single large dam, the plant's reservoir is contained by 88 dikes, totalling 64 km in length. The Smallwood Reservoir has a capacity of 33 cubic kilometres in a catchment area of about 72,000 square kilometres, an area larger than the Republic of Ireland. It drops over 305 metres to the site of the plant's 11 turbines. The plant's power house was hewn from solid granite 300 metres underground. It is about 300 metres long and as high as a 15-story building. The station cost almost a billion Canadian dollars to build in 1970. Commissioned from 1971 to 1974, it is owned and operated by the Churchill Falls Labrador Corporation Limited, a joint venture between Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro (65.8%) and Hydro-Québec (34.2%). Workers at the station live in the purpose-built company town of Churchill Falls.
Power station data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).