The Merrickville Turbine
This piece of history, right here, right now in Merrickville makes me wonder what it was used for.
The hydroelectric turbine behind and beside the Merrickville ruins was used to make electric power from the fast flowing water. It is now 100 years old as it is sitting on the concrete platform or plinth for historic reasons. It stays there to show us what the turbine looked like 100 years ago and shows the working parts that created electric power.
This turbine or turbo generator started generating power for Merrickville in 1915 until 1993.
A turbine has a moving part called a rotor which is a shaft or drum with blades attached. Fast flowing water goes on the blades of the shaft. This creates a force on the blades. This spinning takes the energy from the flowing water to the turbine to produce electric power.
The power at Merrickville was originally used by four old industries: a plow company, a malleable company, a flour company and a woolen mill. A local company of these industries was developing power from a new dam built across the Rideau River.
Since 1992-1993 a group of citizens in Merrickville started to want to save this turbine from the scrap yard. So they did some fundraising and in 2012 took over the ownership of this turbine. It has been repainted and fixed in 2012-2013 by this group of citizens called the Friends of the Merrickville Turbine.
I felt that this piece of history is very very interesting since I had not seen a turbine before. It is awesome that it was used for making this hydroelectric power 100 years ago.
Gabe Radford Grade 5 Merrickville Public School