Development of La Romaine Complex In Northern Quebec, Canada: Behaviour of Asphalt Core Rockfill Dams

Hydro-Québec is developing the Hydroelectric Complex of La Romaine, situated on the North shore of the St Lawrence River, in Quebec, one of the most important development projects in Canada. The $6.5 billion project consists in building 4 generating stations with a total installed power of 1550 MW and an output of 8,0 TWh. The clean and renewable electricity produced in the four power plants of the Complex will help to avoid new emissions of gas with greenhouse effect in North America with approximately 3 million tons of CO2, if that energy would have been generated with natural gas and with about 7,5 million tons of CO2, if coal would have been used for the same purposes. Environmental studies and measures carried out before, during and after construction until 2040 will cost over $385 million altogether. The erection of the Complex started with the $2,4 billion Romaine 2 facilities, completed in 2014: the impounding of the Romaine 2 reservoir begun in May 2014 and finished in November, when the first Megawatts reached our customers. The construction of Romaine 1 and 3 facilities is progressing very well, first kilowatts being expected by December 2015 and June 2017, respectively. Finally, the design stages for the Romaine 4 facility will be completed and the construction will start in 2016. One year after the finish of impounding the reservoir, the 6 Asphalt Core Rockfill Dams of Romaine 2 reservoir are behaving very well and a comparison with similar structures from Norway and Austria is presented in this paper.