Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Plant
Tennessee, United States
The 497th largest power station in the world
Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Plant is a pumped-storage hydroelectric underground power station in Marion County, just west of Chattanooga in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the plant can generate a maximum of 1,652 megawatts of electricity. The reservoir at the top of the mountain covers 528 acres (214 ha), with a dam that is 230 feet (70 m) high and 5,800 feet (1, 800 m) long, the largest rock-fill dam ever built by TVA. With a hydraulic head of roughly 1000 feet high, the dam can apply a maximum force of approximately 450 pounds per square inch of water pressure to the Turbine. The plant serves as an important element for peak power generation and grid balancing in the TVA system. Construction was started in 1970 and was completed in 1978. The plant was idled in March 2012 due to cracks in the generators' rotors. The plant came entirely back on line in April 2014.
Power station data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).