Quote:"Victoria Dam and hydroelectric station, a small 12.4-Megawatt hydro station (two 6.2-MW units), were built in 1931 by the Copper Range Mining Company. The Dam and hydroelectric station are currently operated by Upper Peninsula Power Company (UPPCO), which are remotely controlled from UPPCO's dispatch center.
In the fall of 1929, just before the great stock market crash, work began on the Victoria hydroelectric development. In January 1931, the facility was placed in commercial operation to provide electricity for the area's copper mining and forest products industries.
Today's Victoria is the third dam on this stretch of the Ontonagon River. In 1902, Hooper's Dam was built just upstream in what is now the reservoir. It diverted water to the Taylor air compressor to produce energy for the Victoria Mining Company. In 1903, the original Victoria Dam, a concrete multiple-arch buttress-style structure, was built at the falls. In 1991, it was replaced by the existing roller-compacted-concrete gravity stepped-face dam.
There have also been three pipelines at Victoria. The original 1930 red-wood pipeline was replaced in 1959 with one of the Douglas fir. An actual section of the Douglas fir pipeline was saved and is on display here. For over 40 years, the waters of the south and west branches of the Ontonagon River flowed through this cylinder of wood on their way to Lake Superior. In 2001, the present spiral-welded steel pipeline was built to replace the wooden structure, which had reached the end of its life cycle.
The reservoir, the dam, the pipeline, and the powerhouse are all integral parts of the station's generation system. Victoria operates as a run-of-river facility, meaning whatever flows into the reservoir flows out at approximately the same rate, either through the spill gates or through the pipeline.
Gravity moves the water down the pipeline to the powerhouse, where the force of the water passing through the blades of the water wheels drives the turbines and generates electricity. The head (the difference in elevation between the water at the dam and that in the tailrace or discharge below the powerhouse) is 215 feet. Water flows through the pipeline at the rate of 850 cubic feet per second. To put all that into perspective, it could fill nearly 14 million Olympic-sized swimming pools in an average water year.
UPPCO has been the steward of Victoria Hydro since 1947. That year, the company was formed through the merger of three smaller electric utilities, including Copper District Power Company, the original operator of Victoria Hydro. The many preservation and improvement projects at Victoria bear witness to UPPCO's ongoing commitment to clean, domestic and renewable sources of energy."
Thus concludes your history lesson on the particulars of the Victoria Dam!
Printed on Recycled Internet
