At the tunnel exit

Cyrus at the tunnel exit, right before the water enters a half-buried pipe and makes a steep 300ft drop. It is this drop that gives the water the right amount of velocity to turn Soo Rivers' twin turbines at 514 rpm. Use of this calculated gravity drop to push impellers is called the Franciss method or something.

Anyway, at capacity the turbines produce 4160 volts, which is stepped up to 25,000 volts and carried a few miles down the road to join the BC grid. The facility has its own back-up generator to power up during maintenance etc.

This is looking straight back from the picture on the left

The tunnel itself is 14 ft in diameter, twice as big as the pipe it feeds into. This ensures good pressure and consistent flow. The tunnel is straight bore, no lining. At the tunnel entrance a system of gates diverts debris and things like logs from entering and messing things up.

The aerial on the left was pre-construction, and has been touched-up to portray the layout.

Red is the inflatable dam up top
Blue is the 14ft-wide tunnel
Pink is 7ft pipe (gravity drop for acceleration)
  Yellow the facility
Green the return to Soo river

The aerial shows the roads better than the river. The river is way on the left, the rest are access roads.

5ft of snow prevented us from going up to the dam, so no pics from it.

The back up generator is the grey box on the right, the power conditioner is on its left, and the poles behind them have the 25kV lines that carry the energy down to major transmission lines.