Name:   Shortbus - Subject:   Water Rise - History of January Draw Downs Date:   12/29/2015 10:28:27 AM

Martin dam has 20 spillway gates that are 30 feet by 16 feet in dimension. The gates are opened as needed in the following sequence: 5-11-3-9-7-1-10-6-12-8-4-2-20-19-18-17-16-15-13-14 (left to right in the picture). The first 12 gates opened are above the basin. The capacity of each gate is 3,016,000 gallons per minute (6,700 cfs).

6700 foot^3  189.7228721664 meter^3
----------- = ----------------------
 second       second    
     (volume flow rate)     

Each gate will flow 190 cubic meters/sec
Guess 50 meters of head
You get spillway loss of 83,876 kw or 84 MW per gate
All 20 gates would be 1677 MW 

Total generation is 154 MW or 213,000 horsepower or about a thousand car motors.
So two spill gates at 168 MW are more than the full generation capacity.

So whats the power check look like full blast?
154 MW times $.07/KWH or $70/MWH = $10,780 per hour or $7.76 million per month
Of course average reality is a fraction of this...ain't that much water.

So what's the spill gate loss?
84MW times $70/MWH = $5880 per hour per gate

Just curious. Time to go swimming now.