Site C dam begins generating power after years of construction and controversy

After years of contention and construction, British Columbia’s Site C dam has begun generating power.

BC Hydro said Monday that the archetypal of six generating units astatine the hydroelectric dam connected the Peace River successful northeastern B.C. has been activated.

It says 5 further generating units volition travel online 1 astatine a clip implicit the adjacent year, with the dam afloat activated by autumn 2025.

Each generating portion tin nutrient much than 180 megawatts of power.

The implicit dam volition person a generating capableness of astir 1,100 megawatts and nutrient an estimated 5,100 gigawatt hours of energy annually, boosting the grid’s capableness by astir 8 per cent.

BC Hydro said the dam’s reservoir is present much than 90 per cent full, with h2o level astir 40 metres (131 feet) higher than erstwhile it started.

The Crown corp expects the reservoir to beryllium afloat filled by precocious fall, but said radical should enactment good distant from the country for astatine slightest a twelvemonth owed to imaginable hazards, including slope stableness and debris successful the water.

The dam’s activation marks a large milestone successful a task that was archetypal projected astir 70 years ago.

Proposals for the task were shelved successful the 1980s but revived nether the erstwhile BC Liberal government, which announced it would physique the dam successful 2010 and formally gave it the greenish airy successful 2014.

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Construction began successful 2015 amid large absorption from section landowners, biology groups and section First Nations.

The predetermination of the BC NDP enactment the project’s aboriginal successful question until then-premier John Horgan announced successful precocious 2017 that his authorities would implicit the dam.

In 2021, the NDP revealed the dam’s completion would beryllium delayed by a year, and that costs had risen to $16 billion, up from a anterior estimation of $10.7 cardinal and astir triple its original estimation of $6.6 billion.