Owner | Valisa Energy Incorporated |
Project | New Hydroelectric Development |
Location | Blue River, British Columbia |
Size | 18 MW, $71 Million |
Head and Flow | 188 m & 12.7 m3/s |
Role | Project Management, Construction and Engineering |
The 18-MW run-of-river Bone Hydro Project is located approximately 18 km north of Blue River, British Columbia on Bone Creek which flows west into the North Thompson River.
The headworks consist of a concrete intake structure and a stepped sheet-pile spillway across Bone Creek that creates a small headpond for the intake and sluice way. The gated sluiceway was used for river diversion during construction and now provides for flushing of accumulated sediment from in front of the intake during high flow events.
A 5,800 m long buried penstock conveys the flow to the powerhouse, located just downstream of a series of high cascades that form a barrier to upstream fish migration.
The powerhouse contains two double-Francis 9 MW turbines each with a unique PRV energy dissipation bypass system design by CPL.
Key features include:
- Innovative stepped sheet-pile weir spillway and concrete headworks structure
- One of the longest small hydro penstocks in BC.
- The 5.8 km long, 2.1m diameter steel penstock includes an air vacuum surge relief station
- 50 m span penstock pipe bridge crossing Bone Creek
- Powerhouse has first-of-kind energy dissipater wells for the full turbine flow scroll-case PRV bypass systems
- Construction entailed a peak labour force of 180 workers and over 100 construction vehicles working along a short 10 km of forestry road
- Project withstood a 1:120 year flood event during construction at the 80% completion stage and incurred less than a week delay Main project components were all constructed in just 8 months