Originally posted by scratchpaddy What a magnificent structure! It boggles my mind that there was a time when so much effort (and money) was put into the aesthetics of something as utilitarian as a power plant. It's a shame they don't give tours. Looks like it would be pretty interesting.
I found an article by a guy (he has a team, actually) that has explored the tunnels deep beneath this plant. He's explored the tunnels under the Ontario Generating Station, too. Fascinating stuff. If I had the guts, the skills, and the equipment, I'd love to do that stuff. I guess the rest of us have to settle for pictures, but they are amazing pictures!
Toronto Power Company | Vanishing Point Ontario Generating Station | Vanishing Point Thanks for the quotes, good stuff.
Originally posted by kerrowdown Great shots of an amazing building, do they not harness the power anymore?
If so, I wonder why they didn't "recycle" the building or at least use it for something else.
I know the answer is going to be down to cost somewhere along the line, but it just seems such a waste.
The simple answer is Ontario Hydro is incredibly biased against small projects, I actually had a freind trying to demonstrate some new power source, that was turned down a test project, because he couldn't build a test generator small enough. If you put a low head generator on this plant it could easily crank out 500 megawatts, just from my limited understanding of things, possibly more, but that isn't enough for Ontario Hydro to look at it. However, if the town of Niagara Falls itself wanted to take it over and gve their citizens extremely cheap power, they could probably do that. Ontario Hydro has been very good at lending their expertise to municipalities that go that route. Orillia Ontario where I lived for 2 years had very reasonable power rates because they'd developed three local rivers with small dams. This isn't testimony that would stand up in court, just my take on the situation.
By the way right now Ontario Hydro is boring a new tunnel to make use of the water power, but it's a massive undertaking compared to what this old plant would provide.
Originally posted by daacon Great series the power of man harnessing the power of water.
Thanks Daacon...
Originally posted by slowpez Nice series Norm. There is something about the last one that really catches my eye and I keep going back to it. Like the lines and textures and the DOF makes it so interesting.
It's really a bit of long lens magic. That was taken with the 400 mm lens, and it really compressed the image, flattening it out. So the fall off from front to back isn't nearly as dramatic as if it were taken with a normal lens. Your eye tries it's best to make sense of it, but it's not a perspective your eye would ever see, so there are no neural path ways that would help explain it. It just looks way flatter than it should, given the distance and angle at which it was taken.