Detail Design

Digging Deep for Cooling Water

Wisconsin Electric needed to upgrade the cooling system at its Oak Creek Power Plant, on the western shore of Lake Michigan. When Bechtel was selected to design and build the new Elm Road Generating station, now under construction on the Oak Creek site, engineers came up with an innovative solution for cooling both plants-- take water directly from the lake. The design calls for a tunnel to be dug through the rock underlying the lake, creating an intake/discharge system to serve both power plants that is cleaner, more efficient, and less expensive than the traditional system of using cooling towers to lower the temperature of the water.

To view a graphic glimpse of the cooling process, click here to download a PDF version (1.76 MB) of the illustration.

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