Saint Marys Falls
Saint Marys Falls is a 23.7 MW conventional hydroelectric plant made up of five generating units in Chippewa County, Michigan. The plant sits at the Soo Locks on the St. Marys River, where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers "owns and operates a hydroelectric generating plant directly north of the American locks." A dedicated channel north of the lock complex "provides electricity for the lock complex," with the operator historically selling its surplus output to the local utility rather than consuming it all on site. Cloverland Electric Cooperative, the regional utility that distributes the power, describes the Corps' plant as having "a maximum output of 21 megawatts and averages 18 megawatts daily." This USACE facility is a separate, smaller plant from the nearby privately owned Edison Sault Power Plant on the Sault Ste. Marie power canal, a roughly 30 MW facility that is sometimes confused with it under similar names. EIA-860 shows no retirements planned for any of the five units, which entered service in the early 1950s, and the plant settles into MISO at the nearby MIUP.CLVHDRTN1 node about 1.6 km away.