The largest single-site hydroelectric power project in Canada is inaugurated at Churchill Falls Generating Station.
The Churchill Falls Generating Station is a hydroelectric underground power station in Labrador. At 5,428 MW, it is the tenth largest in the world, and the second-largest in Canada, after the Robert-Bourassa generating station in northwestern Quebec.
Rather than a single large dam, the plant's reservoir is contained by 88 dykes, totalling 64 km in length. Now called the Smallwood Reservoir, it has a capacity of 33 cubic kilometres in a catchment area of about 72,000 square kilometres, an area larger than the Republic of Ireland. It drops over 305 metres to the site of the plant's 11 turbines.
The plant's power house was hewn from solid granite 300 metres underground. It is about 300 metres long and as high as a 15-story building.The station cost almost a billion Canadian dollars to build in 1970. Commissioned from 1971 to 1974, it is owned and operated by the Churchill Falls Labrador Corporation Limited, a joint venture between Nalcor Energy (65.8%) and Hydro-Québec (34.2%). Workers at the station live in the purpose-built company town of Churchill Falls.
The ongoing Lower Churchill Project is a joint venture between Nalcor and Emera to develop the remaining 35 per cent of the Churchill River basin.