Porjus Power Station opens floodgates

Once a year Sweden's oldest (and one of the biggest) hydroelectric power station celebrates "The Falls Day" and opens the floodgates for 15min. 400 cubicmeters of water rush then down the old, dry riverbed. Within 15 min this will be 360.000qm water! Notice the two concrete wavebreakers, each is 3 to 4 meters high! The noise in the beginning of the video is a warning sirene that should warn everybody who is so stupid to climb down the riverbed.

[@megatwingo]

Ah, finally an explaination. Thank you very much for the information! :)

[@snowriderping]

i work at hydros in the usa. yearly dams test the flood gates to make sure they work and the set up at this dam it looks like a good way to flush out the trash that could have collected over the year... i'm sure its nice to make a specail day for it so locals can see it

[@Tjita1]

Oh, so it turns out we have chopper style sirens in Sweden. I thought we only had Kockum Sonics Tyfon everywhere these days. Cool.

[@Saddex]

It's a kind of celebration called, translated from swedish; The waterfalls day. It's sad because so many of our biggest waterfalls and rapids have been "slaughtered" by hydroplants, so sometimes they want to show people how impressing the waterfalls can be at several places. Unfortunately, they do not celebrate this at all places. It's also on different days, but almost always in summer.

[@Saddex]

I can say too this is the 3rd biggest (480MW), but the biggest is located just downstream (977MW). The river name is; Lule River.

[@megatwingo]

If I had a theory....I wouldn´t have asked my question at the beginning.

[@johnjohansson]

This is the town where I come from. My dad works in this power station.

[@garvoi]

so do you have any theories on what they are doing?

[@robinru75]

So did mine! All of them!

[@megatwingo]

Very impressing. 5*****! Why are they opening the gates?

[@megatwingo]

To open the gates is to release the water without sending it through the turbines. In fact it´s a waste. Can it be, that you didn´t noticed, what this video is about, Garvoi?

[@garvoi]

yeah, maybe not - just saw power station and a dam so... nice kind of celebrationthough. Maybe the old riverbed can't hold enough water to make it worthwhile to run an old turbine there?

[@garvoi]

to create power (electricity)..that's why they call it power station.

[@Saddex]

You're welcome :)

[@megatwingo]

Your theory isn´t very likely.