After 71 years of reliable service the old John Hart Generating Station in Campbell River was replaced operationally, as of November 2018, by an underground system. Final project completion went to fall 2019. This ensures our John Hart facility will continue to deliver clean, reliable energy for many decades to come. It has been a massive project: BC Hydro has moved Vancouver Island’s second largest hydroelectric generating facility completely underground. Construction work started in 2014 and the project remained on budget. In 2019, we removed the old generating station down to the ground level, removed the wooden and steel penstocks, and two of the three surge towers.

With most of the construction happening underground, and evolving overtime, it was difficult to visualize its impressive scope. You can go on four different tours from 2017 through 2019. These virtual tours take you down to where the action was and allows you to stand next to the workers – get those virtual tour goggles on, or view it with your smart phone or web browser. You can also take a virtual tour of the old powerhouse when it was operating, and see a time-lapse video of its demolition.

The virtual tour was updated about every six months so you can take tours over time and compare them to what the site looked like earlier in the construction process.

BC Hydro awarded the contract work to InPower BC, which consists of SNC-Lavalin and its subcontractors - Aecon, Frontier-Kemper, General Electric, and others.