engineering

Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant

Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant rather than just read about it. In short: The Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant (also known as the Edison Sault Power Plant, Michigan Lake Superior Hydroelectric Power Plant, and the Cloverland Electric Cooperative Power House) is an 18-MW hydroelectric generating plant located in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (the "Soo").

Key takeaways

Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant (also known as the Edison Sault Power Plant, Michigan Lake Superior Hydroelectric Power Plant, and the Cloverland Electric Cooperative Power House) is an 18-MW hydroelectric generating plant located in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (the "Soo"). It extracts water from the St. Marys River under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers, and the power is taken up and distributed by the Cloverland Electric Cooperative, a rural utility that serves the Soo area.

History As of 2024, the Soo hydropower plant is one of the oldest large generating stations still operating in the United States. The power canal and generator complex were begun in September 1898 and completed in June 1902, using engineering work from the first iteration of large-scale electrical generation in the late 1800s. It was from this work that the plant and utility that grew up around it acquired their historic name of Edison Sault, although Thomas Edison did not himself build the plant.

The Soo hydropower plant was built to contain 74 generators under a single roof. This was done under the constraints of the Classical style, by building an industrial structure of 1,340 feet (410 m) in length parallel to the St. Marys River and facing the structure with masonry. The sandstone facing of the power station was chiseled out of blocks pulled from the Edison Sault Power Canal, the feeder canal that chutes water to the plant. President William Howard Taft visited the plant in 1911. The power canal and hydroelectric plant were together named a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1983. Although the hydroelectric plant could generate as much as 25-30 megawatts if operating at full capacity, grid planners rate it at 18 MW.

Climate

References

External links

Media related to Category:Edison Sault power plant at Wikimedia Commons

Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. MI-1, "Michigan Lake Superior Power Company, Portage Street, Sault Ste. Marie, Chippewa County, MI", 141 photos, 2 color transparencies, 8 measured drawings, 237 data pages, 20 photo caption pages

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant

In research: Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1902 establishments in Michigan, Buildings and structures in Chippewa County, Michigan, Dams in Michigan, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant in simple terms?

Why does Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Saint Marys Falls Hydropower Plant.