Email

Print

  Hydrokinetic News

The Fugitive’s hydropower dam set for $110m upgrade

The iconic Cheoah Dam is set to gain another four or five decades of useful life

Aluminum manufacturing giant Alcoa has kicked off a $110 million upgrade program at its Cheoah Dam hydroelectric facility in North Carolina.

The dam, from which Harrison Ford’s character Dr Richard Kimble leapt in 1993′s The Fugitive, is one of four hydropower facilities that make up Alcoa Power Generating Inc’s 360-megawatt Tapoco Project.

The modernization effort is set to increase the dam’s efficiency and energy output, boosting capacity to 140MW.

It should also mean another 40 to 50 years of life for the hydropower facility.

Rick Bowen, Alcoa Energy President, explained: “These attributes equal sustainability – sustainable energy and sustainable jobs. That’s why we are looking forward to replacing the four 90-year-old Francis turbines with four new high-efficiency turbines, generators, and transformers which will provide an additional 22 megawatts of generating capacity at APGI’s Tapoco Cheoah plant.”

Alcoa, which runs nearly 3,000MW of generating capacity worldwide to power its energy-intensive aluminum smelting and refining operations, was awarded a $12.95 million grant from the federal Recovery Act last year, to support the modernization of Cheoah.

“Significant opportunities”

Jacques Beaudry-Losique, Wind & Water Program Manager for the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, who joined Mr Bowen at the kick-off ceremony, said upgrading existing hydropower projects offered “significant opportunities” as the nation seeks to increase renewable energy generation.

“This project will boost four turbines’ generating capacity by 28%, and serves as a terrific example of how the Recovery Act can expand clean energy while putting people to work,” Mr Beaudry-Losique said.

The first phase of modernization work will see two of the dam’s five power generation units upgraded, while a second phase will see two further units upgraded. Unit Five was rebuilt in 1995 and will not need replacement.

Cheoah was built from 1916 to 1919, and was at the time the world’s highest overflow dam at 225 feet. As part of the Tapoco project, it was given a new 40-year operating license by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission back in 2005.