Massive Dam Will Flood Canadian Grid with Power

It’s no small feat to build a 695-megawatt hydropower generating station in northern Manitoba, Canada. After all, the weather can be quite unforgiving.

“It was minus 45 degrees [Fahrenheit],” said Charles McGowan of Hatch Ltd., the company in charge of creating the dam. “Do you know how cold that is?”

The Keeyask Hydroelectric Generating Station is being constructed on the lower Nelson River, approximately 725 km northeast of Winnipeg. The seven-year project will cost around CAD$6.5 billion.

The station was recently up for the Be Inspired Awards at Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure 2015 Conference in the megaprojects category.

The Keeyask Hydroelectric Generating Station is a large-scale project with even larger rewards.

The designs for the plant include seven turbine units with a rated capacity of 99 megawatts each. The project is being constructed with three earth-fill dams and two earth-fill dikes reaching a crest elevation of approximately 162 m.

It will require the placement of 360,000 m³ of concrete to create a reservoir space of 93 km².

When production begins in 2019, the plant will create an average of 4,400 gigawatt hours of electricity each year. It will be plugged in to the national energy grid and is expected to power 400,000 homes across the country.

Planning the Keeyask Project

The plant is the result of an alliance between Manitoba Hydro and the Keeyask Cree Nations (KCNs), four First Nations in Manitoba. The hope is that the plant will supply both the KCNs and Canada with plentiful electricity.

The plant will also serve as a boost to the local economy by providing 2,000 jobs for local workers.