Author(s): Jarrod Malenchak; John Doering; Hung Tao Shen; Michael Morris; Mmorris@Hydro. Mb. Ca
Linked Author(s): John (Jay) Doering, Hung Tao Shen
Keywords: No keywords
Abstract: The lower Nelson River is located in northern Manitoba, Canada. There are three of the largest generating stations in Manitoba Hydro’s system on this portion of the river, with a combined installed capacity of approximately 3500 MW. Currently, the station situated furthest downstream is the Limestone generating station. The characteristics of the flow regime and the nature of the river bed geometry together provide ideal conditions for very dynamic ice formations to form downstream of this station each winter. Specifically, very large areas of open water give ample time for large quantities of active frazil, anchor ice, and surface ice to form and evolve. The financial and operational implications of these river ice processes have been well documented and are on the order of a million dollars annually for Manitoba Hydro. The focus of this paper will be on the application of the CRISSP2D model to simulate freeze-up ice conditions on a 35 km section of the Nelson River extending from the Limestone generating station at the upstream end of the model to approximately 5 km downstream of the proposed Conawapa generating station ‘B’ Axis. Model formulations and the freeze-up ice processes modeled will be presented. The numerical model will then be calibrated for open water conditions and thermal ice simulations for a chosen time period will be run. The simulated surface ice conditions, specifically the surface ice concentrations and border ice extents will be compared to field observations obtained for the same time.
Year: 2008