Racoon Mountain Pump storage facility- By Daphne T.

On January 23 we got to tour the TVA Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage Facility. After getting lost a couple of times, we finally made it! When we arrived, our tour guide familiarized us with some TVA history. We first learned that very few people got to go on this tour and we felt very lucky. Next he told us that Chattanooga was prone to flooding and used to suffer bad floods before TVA made dams in the area.  During the Great Depression, our area had a big flood and didn’t recover, but TVA helped. They began construction for some of the dams in the 1930s and 40s.  The building of this dam provided jobs for many people that would have otherwise been without work.

Now, TVA works to make sure that they are stewards of the river. They maintain aquatic life, regulate temperature, and balance demands such as how much water flows in and out of the river. This pump water storage facility also provides low cost hydro-generation electricity, which is electricity made by water. To get this special kind of energy, they pull the water from the Tennessee River (Nickajack Lake) and pump it 1 ½ miles into the mountain and 1000 feet above the river.

On the mountain, there is a reservoir where the pumped water waits to be used. When electricity is needed, the water flows out of the reservoir and down through the turbine which is attached to an electromagnet generator which is like a wheel that has magnets and copper wiring inside it to make electricity.  The stronger the magnet the more electricity.

TVA can control how much electricity is made by how much water is released. At times of high demands, such as early in the morning when people are getting ready for work and school, more electricity is needed so more water is released. Temperature also determines how much electricity is made. Sometimes if they miscalculate the temperature, they make to little or to much energy and have to buy or sell more.

This facility actually uses more energy than it produces but it can produce energy at the peak times so less energy has to be purchased from nearby areas to meet our local electricity demand.

There are not many places like this in the country. Pumped storage facilities can hold up to 16 megawatts of electricity. Now that is a lot!

After he talked to us a little bit about the dams and pumped storage facilities, we got to go inside the mountain!

               

We learned that weirs, low dams built across the water, measure the water flow in the mountain. Also, penstocks are kind of floodgates that regulate the flow of a body of water and monitor pressure in the mountain. We even saw a place where oil was seeping naturally out of the rock.

It was really neat to be able to actually go inside the mountain where electricity is generated and the Tucker River Fellows were really excited about this opportunity to learn about the Raccoon Mountain Pump Storage Plant.

            We rode the elevator from the bottom of the mountain to the top and this was the equivalent of 38 floors!