Visit To a 1912 Hydroelectric Station

Just back from an absolutely fascinating trip to The Power House at Stave Falls, in Mission B.C., just 40 miles east of Vancouver. This 52.5-megawatt hydroelectric plant fed sustainable energy into the region’s grid between 1912 and 2000, when it was decommissioned and replaced with a more efficient powerhouse just to the east. Anyone with an interest in green energy would love this easy day trip from Vancouver.

Here’s the impressive main hall of the place, seen from the walkway above. You can see the four original grey turbines in the back of the cavernous space, each fed by a pipe—or “penstock”—leading in from the dam above, outside the building to the left of the frame. Each of these penstocks is just shy of 14 feet in diameter. In 1926, the utility retrofitted a fifth, much larger, turbine into the building. That’s the larger green pipe in the foreground, almost 20 feet in diameter. In the upper-back of the frame you can see the black control board that ran the whole place.

When running full tilt, about 750,000 gallons of water went through each of the original four turbines every minute. Imagine what this room was like for the men who used to work here, running around checking gauges and adjusting the intake gates to control the output of the powerhouse. The guide told me that one of the original workers came through for a visit; he told her that there was so much thunder and howling noise that the entire building vibrated, often giving some of the men motion sickness.

The museum has cut open Turbine #1 to reveal the guts, and has the shaft running at the “visitor friendly” demo speed of four RPM. Here’s a short clip to help you grasp the scale in this place.

From an outside viewing deck at the back of the powerhouse, you can see the remnants of the massive, now rusting penstocks that carried water from the reservoir behind the dam, down and through the turbines.

Until the facility was largely automated in the late 20th century, workers ran the whole power house from a control board atop the catwalk, with a view of every turbine and piece of equipment below. The Canadian Westinghouse Company in Hamilton, Ontario, constructed it from a huge slab of black marble. It was purposely laid out as simply as possible. There were six 4,000-volt main switches and four 60,000-volt oil switches. All the high-tension wiring was enclosed in fireproof cells made of concrete slabs. Here are a couple of nice details from the panels. (What do you do when the “lake level” alarm sounds?)

Thanks to modern versions of stations like this, approximately 90 percent of British Columbia’s electricity supply originates with renewable sources. It was extremely cool to get a glimpse of this lovingly restored tribute to green power in British Columbia. Attention renewable-energy geeks and climate wonks: This one’s worth the jaunt. Well done, B.C. Hydro.

Meantime, I’ve been invited to tour another, much more modern green-energy facility currently under construction elsewhere in British Columbia. Full report to follow. Stay tuned!