page_title: Benmore Dam
section_title: Key statistics
hierarchical_section_title: Benmore Dam / Key statistics
caption_attribution_description: English: Panorama of Benmore Dam, in Canterbury, New Zealand.
context_page_description: Benmore Dam is the largest dam within the Waitaki power scheme, located in the Canterbury region of New Zealand's South Island. There are eight other power stations in the Waitaki Power Scheme.
  The dam is the largest earth-fill water-retaining structure in New Zealand. Its core is low permeability clay material, supported by two massive shoulders of river gravel. Lake Benmore has a volume of 1.25 billion cubic metres, about 1.5 times as much water as Wellington Harbour. The dam's spillway can cope with over 6,000 cubic metres of water per second, about 20 times the mean river flow.
context_section_description: Lake Benmore area: ~ 75 square kilometres
  Lake Benmore shoreline: 116 km
  Dam crest length: 823 metres
  Dam crest height: 100 metres
  Dam width at base: 490 metres
  Dam width at crest: 10.6 metres
  Dam fill: 28 million tonnes
  Head (hydraulic): 92 metres
  Average river water flow: 340 m³/s
  Nominal annual generation: 2,200 GWh
  Installed capacity: 540 MW
  Machinery: 6 x 93,000 kW vertical Francis turbines (Dominion Engineering, Canada), coupled to 6 x 90,000 kW 112,500 kVA generators (Canadian General Electric); 3 transformers totalling 1,150 MVA
  Penstocks: Concrete
caption: Benmore Dam from the south lookout, near the spillway
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