Wellington Dam Hydro Power Station
The Wellington Reservoir is a reservoir in the south-west of the Australian state of Western Australia. The dam about 20 km west of Collie is equipped with a water turbine which supplies a power of 2 MW. This hydroelectric power plant is one of only two in Western Australia. The northern part of the reservoir is located in the Wellington National Park.
The dam was built in 1933 and expanded in 1956 and the plant itself was built in the 1950s.
The Wellington Reservoir is the largest in the southwest of Western Australia and the second largest in the whole of Western Australia. It is in the course of the Collie River.
In December 2009, the Water Corporation led an AU $ 41 million through expensive project to strengthen the dam.
History
The Wellington reservoir was built in the first half of the 20th century, into the Great Southern Towns Water Supply System drinking water - the water supply system for the cities of the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia - to feed. Thus were cities in the north to Northam, supplied in the east to Lake Grace and in the south to Katanning. The supply line runs virtually parallel to the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme (specifically from Mundaring Weir to Kalgoorlie ) and the two lines are even connected somewhere.
The Wellington Reservoir is fed by the Collie River and its tributaries, which were salty slowly in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s there was a lot of reforestation operated to curb the trend of salinization. A new reservoir, Lake Ballingall at Harris River was completed in the 1990s and supplied the Wellington reservoir with fresh water until it is one day free of salt again.
The Wellington Reservoir in 1935 for the irrigation of agricultural land in the coastal plain, with a capacity of 35 million m³. In the following decades, the dam was raised several times and in 1960 reached the lake has a capacity of 185 million m³.
Gallery Images
Wellington Reservoir in the construction phase (October 2010)
External links and sources
- Website by Verve Energy ( English)
- Wellington Dam - WA. ExplorOz.com
- Map of Wellington Dam, WA. Bonzle.com