Wellington Dam Hydro Power Station facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Wellington Dam Hydro Power Station |
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Wellington Dam during the upgrade in October 2010
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 Location of Wellington Dam Hydro Power Station in Western Australia
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| Country | Australia |
| Location | Collie, Western Australia |
| Coordinates | 33°23′52″S 115°59′27″E / 33.39778°S 115.99083°E |
| Designated | 3 February 2009 |
| Reference no. | 6344 |
Wellington Dam Hydro Power Station is a hydroelectric power station near Collie, Western Australia. It has one water turbine with a generating capacity of 2 megawatts (2,700 hp) of electricity. The Wellington Dam Hydro Power Station is one of three hydro power stations in Western Australia. The dam was constructed in 1933 and enlarged in 1956, and the power station was built in the 1950s.
Wellington Dam is the largest dam in the South West and the second largest in Western Australia, and is fed by the Collie River.
In December 2009 the Water Corporation started a $41 million project to strengthen the dam wall.
History
Wellington Dam was built in the early 1900s to supply water to the Great Southern Towns Water Supply system – the pipeline system that supplies water to the wheatbelt towns in Southern WA. Supplying towns as far north as Northam, east to Lake Grace, south to Katanning. The line basically runs parallel to the Goldfields water supply scheme (from Mundaring Weir to Kalgoorlie), and the two lines even join somewhere. It gets its water from the Collie River catchment, which started going salty during the 1960s and 1970s. Much re-afforestation work has been happening since the 1980s to slow down the trend of rising salinity. A new dam on nearby Harris River was commissioned in the 1990s to supply fresh water until such time as Wellington Dam is fresh again sometime in the future.
Wellington Dam was originally built in 1935 with a storage capacity of 35 gigalitres (1.2 billion cubic feet) as a source of irrigation on the coastal plains. The dam was raised over the years and reached its current capacity is 185 gigalitres (6.5 billion cubic feet) in 1960.
Gallery
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Wellington Dam before the upgrade.
- Verve Energy page on hydrolectricity
