River Wire Blog

Maintenance projects and, more importantly, low snowpacks force river flow reductions.

From the Bureau of Reclamation:

As part of the new SCADA upgrade system, a 4-hour maintenance outage is scheduled at the Canyon Ferry powerplant on January 24, 2012 to replace each of the unit’s PLC CPU’s and reprogram them. With mountain snowpack near 80 percent of average, releases will also be decreased to slow the evacuation rate of storage in Canyon Ferry. In response, the following operation changes are required at Canyon Ferry Dam and Powerplant, restricting and limiting turbine releases to 2-unit capacity during the 4-hour maintenance outage.

• During 1000-1400 hour on Tuesday, January 24, 2012:
• Increase releases through the river outlet gates to ≈ 1,250 cfs.
• Maintain releases through the spillway gates at 0 cfs.
• Decrease turbine releases to ≈ 3,250 cfs (≈ 805 MW-Hrs/day using 97.1 cfs/mw).
• Maintain releases for Helena Valley Project at 0 cfs.
• Decrease and maintain release to the Missouri River at 4,500 cfs.
• Decrease and maintain total release from Canyon Ferry at 4,500 cfs.

Special Note: Immediately following the 4-hour maintenance outage, turbine releases will be increased to 4,500 cfs (1,112MW-Hrs/day using 97.1 cfs/mw) and flows through the river outlet gates will be discontinued.