Carter Hydro Energy Storyline

[carbonpencil]

How much power was the old Carter Hydro Energy Dam supposed to produce and why was it built? It seems like it sends most of it's power to the mainland and very little to the inhabitants of the island.

I guess that each turbine was designed to produce 100 Mw and that there are two turbines at the dam. If the average demand per US/European/Canadian home is 2 Kw then there may have been enough power to supply 100,000 homes. But the island seems to have only a couple of hundred homes.

Could the power station have been constructed to prepare for the great collapse (Or the first flash)? Why else would that area need so much power? I am hoping for a story tie in that could introduce some kind of end of the world subterranean computer center where something like William Gibon's Neuromancer could live (Or begin? Maybe if Carter Hydro Energy was part of Tessier Ashpool's infrastructure portfolio). But that would be a dream.

Edited July 23, 2020 by carbonpencil

[carbonpencil]

It's very speculative and the island could well be larger since the penitentiary might also be on the island.

So maybe the remoteness, defensive terrain, proximity to exploitable prison labor, untapped energy resources (hydro power and glowing ore?) and subterranean possibilities would make a great location of some secret end of the world bunker.

[ManicManiac]

I think most of your questions are answered (though sometimes indirectly) by the lore sprinkled around the game world, as well as from the characters expanding on the history of Great Bear Island as we play thought the chapters of Wintermute.

 

On 7/23/2020 at 8:38 AM, carbonpencil said:

How much power was the old Carter Hydro Energy Dam supposed to produce and why was it built?

Personally I don't think it's terribly important what the exact amount of power that was produced by the dam in it's prime (or perhaps just it's best "working" state)... from a narrative standpoint, I think it's power output was fine.  I think the problem that led to it's ruin was from the quakes causing issues with keeping the dam viable/productive.  The quakes were implied to both threaten the structural integrity as well as damaging much of the internal components.

It was also implied both by the structure itself and the lore, that the dam has been in abandoned and in disrepair for a considerable length of time (since it's implied that the great collapse and associated quakes happened long before the First Flash (the geomagnetic event that serves as the inciting incident for the games' main story).

 

On 7/23/2020 at 8:38 AM, carbonpencil said:

Could the power station have been constructed to prepare for the great collapse

I doubt it... as it was implied that the great collapse is what ruined the industry that was previously thriving there, and that after the collapse Great Bear Island began to "die" (in terms of human industry/economy).  Also... it seemed to be implied that the collapse and quakes took folks by surprise, so I doubt anything was done in preparation for an event no one would have been likely to predict. 

 

On 7/23/2020 at 8:38 AM, carbonpencil said:

Why else would that area need so much power?

...Lumber mills, ore/coal processing plants, logging camps, canneries, fish processing plants (industry tends to require a lot of energy)... and all the workers and inhabitants living on the island would have likely wanted power, heat, and warm running water.

This is just what I got from the lore.  I don't pretend to know the whole story because Hinterland is working on the last two chapters of Wintermute and may have more surprising revaluations for us. 

Edited July 26, 2020 by ManicManiac

[carbonpencil]

On 7/27/2020 at 7:03 AM, ManicManiac said:

Personally I don't think it's terribly important what the exact amount of power that was produced by the dam in it's prime (or perhaps just it's best "working" state)

You know I just wanted to make room for a scenario where the power was being used in some fantastic way that steers towards one of my favorite works of fiction. It's just a wish.

On 7/27/2020 at 7:03 AM, ManicManiac said:

I doubt it... as it was implied that the great collapse is what ruined the industry that was previously thriving there, and that after the collapse Great Bear Island began to "die" (in terms of human industry/economy).

The inhabitants may have been surprised but for a forward thinking mega corporation, planning it would be about business continuity by diversifying their assets. It's the kind of thing a large multinational Internet company might need to do in order to maintain their services. 

Amazon, Google and Facebook already use remote data centers that span acres, run 24/7, backup all their data, and consume enough energy to worry about utilizing the thermodynamic advantage that colder snowy environments bring. They may even be prepared for end of the world scenarios in some way (mabye even stocked up on MRE and reserves of generator fuel).

If they were forward thinking enough to use AI to help humanity in the event of an unforseen catastrophe (think of Terminator's Skynet), then that AI would need to be working overtime in such conditions. Who knows what AI's may predict about the future. Maybe the AI's will decide to use 5G against us all and break the magnetosphere (just be skeptical).

On 7/27/2020 at 7:03 AM, ManicManiac said:

...Lumber mills, ore/coal processing plants, logging camps, canneries, fish processing plants (industry tends to require a lot of energy)... and all the workers and inhabitants living on the island would have likely wanted power, heat, and warm running water.

Even though the hydro dam is old it still seems to be decades ahead of the wooden (non concrete) buildings around. Even with their industry demands a hydro power station seemed to be more than enough and adds room to additional lore. The story of Carter Hydro is just like those forward thinking companies that leave legacies behind when things go wrong. 

 

I heard about this being done for large data centres awhile ago. Here's an example in Sweden where a town of 100,000+ and two Hydro-power plants hosts a data centre for Facebook.
Facebook boasts green data centre in Lulea Sweden

 about

Edited July 29, 2020 by carbonpencil