“Churchill Falls is where a wild northern river becomes something almost eternal, where water gathered beneath Labrador skies carries the strength of the land, the patience of time, and the quiet promise of Canada’s future.” – MJ Martin
A Canadian Hydroelectric Giant
Churchill Falls, Labrador, is one of the great engineering achievements of Canadian hydroelectric development. The Churchill Falls Generating Station contains 11 generating units with an installed capacity of 5,428 MW and produces more than 34 terawatt-hours of electricity in an average year. It is one of the largest underground hydroelectric generating stations in the world. (Newfoundland & Labrador Hydro)
Understanding Churchill Falls, however, requires distinguishing between two fundamentally different approaches to hydroelectric generation: storage hydroelectricity and run-of-the-river hydroelectricity.
What Does “Run-of-the-River” Mean?
The Government of Canada defines a run-of-the-river hydroelectric plant as one that uses the water flowing naturally in a river, with little or no storage available to modify that flow. (Termium Plus) Instead of accumulating enormous quantities of water behind a major reservoir, the generating station essentially takes the river as it arrives.
Think of it like a water wheel placed in a continuously flowing stream. When the river carries more water, greater generating potential is available. When river flow declines, generation may decline with it. Some run-of-the-river plants incorporate limited “pondage,” allowing modest short-term regulation, but they do not possess the enormous seasonal storage capacity associated with conventional reservoir hydroelectric developments. (IAAC)
Run-of-the-river therefore does not mean that there are necessarily no dams, tunnels, weirs, or penstocks. The defining characteristic is the absence of substantial water storage capable of significantly shifting generation from one period to another.
Churchill Falls Is Not Technically a Run-of-the-River
Churchill Falls is different. Nearly 90 dams and dikes across the Upper Churchill basin direct water toward the generating station, while water is stored in the approximately 7,000-square-kilometre Smallwood Reservoir before being released for generation. (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador)
This makes Churchill Falls a reservoir-storage hydroelectric development, not a conventional run-of-the-river facility. The reservoir acts much like an enormous natural battery. Water represents stored potential energy, and operators have considerably greater ability to control when that energy passes through the turbines.
That distinction is strategically important. Run-of-the-river generation largely follows nature’s schedule. Reservoir hydro allows the utility to manage water over time, supporting greater predictability, seasonal balancing, and electrical system reliability.
The Bigger Question
As Canada expands renewable electricity to support electrification, data centres, industrial growth, and variable wind and solar generation, should we regard large hydroelectric reservoirs primarily as generating facilities, or increasingly as enormous energy-storage systems? And when comparing the environmental impact of run-of-the-river and reservoir hydro, should we focus only on flooded land, or also consider the additional grid reliability and renewable-energy integration that stored water can provide?
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin is a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.