Edit Proposal: Milestone-Proposal:Eel River Back-to-Back High Voltage Direct Current Converter Station, 1972

Thank you for proposing a technical achievement for possible recognition as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing. Your efforts help preserve the heritage of technology. Detailed information on the Milestone application process may be found at: Milestone Guidelines and How to Propose a Milestone.

To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation? Yes No

Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? Yes No

Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s fields of interest? (e.g. “the theory and practice of electrical, electronics, communications and computer engineering, as well as computer science, the allied branches of engineering and the related arts and sciences” – from the IEEE Constitution) Yes No

Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? Yes No

Was it of at least regional importance? Yes No

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? Yes No

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? Yes No

Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? Yes No

Has the owner of the site given permission to place an IEEE plaque? Yes No

Contact us at ieee-history@ieee.org if you are unable to answer "yes" to all of the above and would still like to proceed.

Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred: Canadian General Electric and NB Power commissioned Eel River HVDC in 1972*.

Title of the proposed milestone. (Include date or date range in title. Example: “Alternating Current Electrification, 1886”)

Eel River Back-to-Back High Voltage Direct Current Converter Station, 1972

Please provide a plaque citation in English summarizing the achievement and its significance. Text absolutely limited by plaque dimensions to 70 words; 60 is preferable for aesthetic reasons. NOTE: The IEEE History Committee shall have final determination on the wording of the citation. For more information and suggestions about writing milestone citations, please visit Helpful Hints on Citations, Plaque Locations.

In what IEEE section(s) will the milestone plaque(s) reside? IEEE Region 7, New Brunswick Section.

Please specify the IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone, and supply name and contact information for the senior officer from those OU(s). Sponsorship has three aspects: 1) Payment for the cost of the plaque(s), 2) Arranging the dedication ceremony, and 3) agreeing to monitor the plaque and to let IEEE History Center staff know in case the plaque needs to be moved, is no longer secure, etc. Number 3 must be done by the IEEE Section(s) in which the plaque(s) is located, but aspects 1 and 2 can be done by any IEEE Organizational Unit, and they need not be the same one. Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.

Street address(es) and GPS coordinates of the intended milestone plaque site(s). Please include coordinates in decimal format rather than degrees.

Eel River is located in Northern New Brunswick, Canada

What is the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s) relation to the achievement? The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.

Also, please Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). (e.g. Is it corporate buildings? Historic Site? Residential? Are there other historical markers already at the site?)

If successful in receiving this acknowledgment, NB Power would organize a celebration event in conjunction with Engineering Week, which is held annually in February. We would propose an event be held at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, along with representatives from the IEEE, and IEEE NB Section. In addition, we would invite key stakeholders and the media to attend. After the plaque is received, it would be displayed in the main lobby of our Dalhousie Generating Station, where it would be visible to employees and visitors for viewing.

Are the original buildings extant?

Yes

Please provide the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc.

How is the intended plaque site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public? If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give details as well as the contact information visitors will need in order to arrange to visit the plaque.

Original buildings are in existence, inside a High Voltage Transmission Terminal yard. More exposure to the plaque would be possible at the nearby Dalhousie Generating Station. The Eel River HVDC facility is a secured operational facility unavailable to the public. Dalhousie Generating Station, which is located nearby and has an office area and a large vestibule, accessible to the public.

Who is the present owner of the site(s)?

NB Power Transmission Corporation

In the space below, please describe in detail:

• the historic significance of the achievement,
• its importance to the evolution of electrical and computer engineering and science,
• its importance to regional/national/international development,
• its benefits to humanity,
• the ways the achievement was a significant advance rather than an incremental

improvement of existing technology.

The material submitted here will constitute the main descriptive article on the ETHW website for readers to learn about the milestone. Space is unlimited, and detail is encouraged. Most milestones require 1000 to 1500 words of support, however there is no word limit. The article should be readable by a wide audience that includes practicing engineers, scholars of history, and the general public. Some examples of the text of good milestone articles are First Radio Astronomical Observations Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry] and G3_Facsimile International Standardization of G3 Facsimile (Do not worry about the formatting of the page, IEEE History Center Staff will do that afterwards.)

What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)?

Eel River back-to-back High Voltage Direct Current converter station, the first in the world to be completely solid state. The station is a 320Mega Watt facility, comprised of two poles of 80kVolt 2000-Ampere Direct Current. Both the New Brunswick and Hydro Quebec sides of the station operate at 230kVolt 3 phase Alternating Current. Technologically, new high current silicon solid state thyristors were coming into use and Canadian General Electric and NB Power entered an agreement to enable a demonstration plant to prove the technology. Today, a third of a century later, the plant is still in service and NB Power is considering upgrades. Politically or socially, Hydro Quebec had just built some massive hydroelectric power stations at Churchill Falls, Manicouagan and LaGrande. A block of energy would be available for a number of years. NB Power capitalized on this situation. It resulted in NB Power customers having lower electricity rates for many years. Hydro Quebec has since become a major exporter of energy and has installed a number of HVDC stations. However, Eel River was the first HVDC interconnection between Hydro Quebec and a neighbouring utility. On a reliability basis, New Brunswick with its 2000 MW power system could not be attached directly to the Hydro Quebec system because we were already tied to the North American Eastern Interconnection of some 200,000MW. Minor disturbances would have disrupted the New Brunswick system, thus affecting NB Power customers. HVDC allowed the power to be imported

What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?

The major technical obstacle was to obtain acceptable transient performance during disturbances. Having enough voltage support was also the challenge, and required three rotary synchronous converters and nearby 112 MVA Dalhousie Plant to maintain voltage and give the electronic station some inertia. Control systems included a governing function and a stabilizing function, both based on the judiciously weighted frequency difference of both systems.

What features set this work apart from similar achievements?

In previous HVDC projects, be it back to back or DC Transmission lines, the converters and inverters were constructed with vacuum tube technology known as mercury arc valves. These were prone to re-strikes, which deteriorated the transient performance of the facilities. The Nelson River project (recent milestone for 900 km HVDC transmission system) retrofitted thyristors to half of their bridges, which enabled the technology to be proven and pave the road for the Eel River Project shortly after. A converter has the Alternating Current connection at its input and the Direct current at its output. An inverter is the opposite. A converter / inverter constitutes a DC Link. If the distance is long, we call it a DC Transmission Line. If the distance is short like at Eel River (some 30' of 2000 Ampere bus), then it is a back-to-back HVDC station.

Significant references to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. The full reference, in English, must be uploaded, not just the citation. See below section for details on uploading material to the website.

Supporting materials (supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC) which can be made publicly available on the IEEE History Center’s website (i.e. unencumbered by copyright, or with the copyright holder’s permission). All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. Images and photographs are especially appreciated, however, it is necessary that you list the copyright owner for these and obtain the copyright owner’s permission to reuse. For documents that are copyright-encumbered, or which you do not have rights to post, email the documents themselves to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please see the Milestone Program Guidelines for more information. To add attachments, first upload the file and add by adding the text [[Media:(filename)]] - if the file you uploaded was named "Milestone Reference.pdf", include the text [[Media:Milestone Reference.pdf]] in the appropriate field.

Please email a jpeg or PDF a letter in English, or with English translation, from the site owner(s) giving permission to place IEEE milestone plaque on the property, and a letter (or forwarded email) from the appropriate Section Chair supporting the Milestone application to ieee-history@ieee.org with the subject line "Attention: Milestone Administrator"

Submit this proposal to the IEEE History Committee for review. Only check this when the proposal is finished

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