Site C Clean Energy Project
Fort St. John, British Columbia, Canada
Project Details
Project Type:
Integrated Engineering Services
Project Leadership:
Simon Douglas, P.Eng.
Size:
1100 MW
The 1,100 MW Site C Clean Energy Project is currently under construction on the Peace River in northeast British Columbia, Canada. The project includes a 60 m-high, 1,050 m-long earthfill dam, as well as an 800 m-long roller compacted concrete (RCC) buttress and foundation. Once in operation, the generating units will produce about 5,100 gigawatt hours of electricity per year. Two concrete-lined tunnels, almost 11 -m in diameter, are diverting the river during construction of the dam.
Services Provided by KCB
KCB has been involved in the design, construction support, regulatory, environmental, and procurement support portions of the project providing multi-disciplinary engineering services for the main civil works, the generating station and spillways, and the balance of plant contracts.
KCB has provided comprehensive engineering and support services since the earliest days of the project. From 1989 to 1991, KCB was involved with the preliminary and final design activities. Since 2007, KCB has provided preliminary, optimization, tender and final design engineering services, technical reviews, support services through the environmental assessment process into construction with resident engineering services. Construction activities began at the project site in 2015 and are scheduled to continue until approximately 2025.
KCB is providing on-site construction support and quality assurance activities with key representatives in the resident engineering team based at site in Fort St. John BC. KCB also has a Vancouver-based engineering team dedicated to providing design and construction services to support the ongoing construction.
Challenges
- The rock conditions at the dam site consist primarily of shale, which is a fine-grained, laminated, sedimentary rock that contains natural joints. These joints need to be carefully considered with potential design solutions because they create a possible sliding failure mechanism due to the weaker resistance along these planes within the foundation.
Solutions
- As part of an integrated engineering team, KCB developed an innovative solution using a Roller Compacted Concrete (RCC) buttress to stabilize the original river valley wall and serve as the foundation for the generation station and spillways
Successes
- The project is an example of sustainable solutions in water management. Compared to the upstream W.A.C. Bennett Dam (one of the province’s largest hydroelectric facilities), Site C will generate 35% of the same energy with a reservoir footprint that is just 5% of the size of the Williston Reservoir.