Lower Churchill Project

Completed 2010

The works consisted of geotechnical investigations to assess the feasibility of a cable tunnel crossing of the 18 km wide Strait of Belle Isle, between Labrador and Newfoundland, for the transmission of power from the Lower Churchill Project. Phase 1 is the Muskrat Falls HEP of 824 MW and Phase 2 is the Gull Island HEP of 2250 MW.

Services included:

• Preparation of technical specifications for tender documents for site investigation work, including inclined core drilling and permeability tests.
• Evaluation of the geological logs of more than 3 km of rock core, the supervision of permeability testing and the preparation of geological reports and tunnel support evaluation.
• Conceptual design of the cable tunnel as a drill & blast tunnel and also as a bored TBM tunnel based on the geotechnical investigations.
• Preparation of a cost estimate for the tunnel construction for these two alternatives.

Completed 2017

The task of Landsvirkjun was predominantly an ice load assessment for the transmission line from Muskrat Falls to St. Johns

The work involved:

• Design and manufacturing of equipment for test spans that were installed in the Long Range Mountains in Newfoundland.
• Modelling of historical icing events.
• Modelling and simulating the effects of icing for selected weather conditions.
• Comparison of modelled effects of icing to known icing observation in the area.
• Evaluation of design loads for in-cloud icing.
• Classification of various transmission line routes, according to the risk of icing and executing a first analysis on the risk of in-cloud icing in the Labrador area.