Rehabilitating Manitoba Hydro’s oldest operating power plant

With some of the hydroelectric works at Manitoba Hydro’s Pointe du Bois Generating station clocking in at over a century, it is the utility’s oldest operating power plant, having gone into service in 1911. Still, as they often say in car and home restorations, “the bones are still good.” And Manitoba Hydro plans to continue to use it to generate clean, reliable hydroelectricity well into the future.

The generation room at Pointe du Bois, where civil work is underway to accommodate new generators and turbines.

In November, Canada’s federal government and Manitoba’s provincial government announced joint funding of $314 million for the station’s rehabilitation — a project dubbed the Pointe du Bois Renewable Energy Project, or PREP.

The project, which started in 2022, includes installing eight new, higher-efficiency turbine and generating units — work that is expected to increase Pointe du Bois’s generating capacity by 54 megawatts to a grand total of 129 megawatts. The work will increase the annual amount of clean, low-cost, renewable energy generated at the Pointe du Bois Generating Station by 380 Gigawatt hours per year, on average, until 2055 — equivalent to the amount of power required for 35,000 homes.

Pointe du Bois in January 2024.

To move that extra power, another key component of the project will focus on construction of a new transmission line. That will entail a substantial upgrade to the switchyard at Pointe du Bois and a 115-kilovolt line going from the generating station to other key areas of the province.

Manitoba Hydro’s interim President and CEO, Hal Turner, began his career as a turbine and generator engineer. Turner visited Pointe du Bois in January as part of his previous role as Vice-President of Asset Planning & Delivery and likens the project to renovating an old home.

A belt-and-shaft driven governor that is still producing power at Pointe du Bois.

“When you look at Pointe du Bois from the outside, there are places that do not look in good condition,” said Turner. “As we cut away the concrete to accommodate the larger generators, while on the surface it may not look great, the bones — that structure underneath — is in pretty good condition. This is still an asset that has value.”

The project’s anticipated completion date is 2027.