In this view looking north, the overlook provides a spectacular view at the Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage facility in Marion County.
Tony Giggy, right, BVI Visitor Center Volunteer and Board Member, talks with visitors to the newly remodeled center at the Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage Plant in Marion County. From left are, Justice Johnson, Angie Headrick and Giggy.Visitors Center reopens
Hours: Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily from April through October, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. November through March, except for major holidays and in times of severe weather. Location: Atop Raccoon Mountain, eight miles from downtown Chattanooga. Go west on Interstate 24 to exit 175 (Browns Ferry Road). Turn right on Browns Ferry Road toward Lookout Mountain. After about 0.9 miles, turn left on Elder Mountain Road. Go about 1.8 miles and turn left on TVA Access Road. Continue about 1.2 miles to the visitors center.
The overlook is a spectacular view at the Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage facility in Marion County.A visitors center atop Raccoon Mountain reopens today after a two-year outage to again offer not only spectacular views of Tennessee's "grand canyon" but a peek into TVA's biggest and most unique energy storage system.
Nearly 1,100 feet above the nearby Tennessee River and next to a 528-acre lake TVA erected near four decades ago on top of Raccoon Mountain, the free visitors center sits on top of a mountaintop marvel.
TVA's pumped storage facility was carved out of the mountain just west of Chattanooga in the 1970s to help the electric utility use its surplus power during off-peak hours to fill up the mountaintop lake and then use that water during peak demand periods to generate power when it is needed most.
The facility acts like a giant storage battery for TVA. But over most of the past five years, the pumped storage facility or its visitors center have been closed due to equipment repairs and replacements.
From 2012 to 2014, TVA replaced the rotors in the four giant generators within the mountain plant, which shut down the pumped storage facility while the visitors center continued to operate. Over the past two years, TVA has kept the plant running while it replaced 15 of the 2,400-foot long electric cables that carry the power generated within Raccoon Mountain back to TVA's electric grid. But the recabling forced the visitors center to close to provide a staging area and entry way to the mountain tunnels by contractors and TVA employees doing the work.
With the completion of the $17 million cable replacement project this summer following the earlier $80 million rotor replacements, the pumped storage facility is ready to help TVA meet its power fluctuations for the next half century and TVA retirees are ready again to show off their work in the reopened visitors center.
The Raccoon Mountain Visitors Center is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through October and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. through the winter months, except on holidays and in times of severe weather. Staffed by TVA retirees, the visitor center features maps, videos and displays explaining Raccoon Mountain, TVA's history and its activities today.
"Some of the best stories you will hear are from the TVA retirees themselves who voluntarily staff our visitors centers," said Laura Smith, TVA's Visitors Center coordinator. "Every time you visit, you are likely to hear another interesting part of TVA's story from those who lived and worked for TVA."
The Raccoon Mountain visitors center is one of eight such centers that TVA retirees staff at TVA dams and other facilities to help educate the public about America's biggest government-owned utility.
The area around Raccoon Mountain is a state-designated Wildlife Observation Area and frequently offers a view of bald eagles, whitetail deer, gray foxes and other wildlife. The overlook at the visitors center offers a view of the Tennessee River gorge and Signal Mountain, and nearby Laurel Point offers access to nearly 30 miles of biking and hiking trails on the dam reservation.
The visitors center has an elevator that goes down the equivalent of 38 stories to the bottom of the mountain shaft. But since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, TVA no longer allows visitors to descend into the mountain to view the four giant generators that are capable of producing 1,652 megawatts of power for up to 22 hours. Similar security concerns about a terrorist attack have also restricted where visitors may go at other TVA dams and facilities.
In the nonpublic area within the mountain, blue, red and purple-painted generators, turbines and pumps keep water flowing up or down the mountain most of the day.
In full production, Raccoon Mountain is TVA's biggest hydroelectric generator and is capable of supplying the power needs of three cities the size of Chattanooga. But filling the 1.7 billion-gallon mountaintop lake requires about 15 percent more power than what TVA gets from when that same water is used to turn the hydro-powered turbines at the base of the mountain.
Despite the net power loss, however, Raccoon Mountain is invaluable in helping TVA level its power load and in responding to sudden demands for power when major power plants or nuclear reactors trip or suddenly shut down.
"We can be at full power within 88 seconds," said Ken Cornett, senior manager at TVA's Raccoon Mountain facility.
In 2013, for instance, the pumped storage facility prevented TVA from having to make an estimated 765 starts of its combustion turbine generators, which are the most expensive generation source of power and are used on hot summer days or cold winter mornings to help meet high power demand int the Tennessee Valley.
"Each of those CT (combustion turbine) startups cost anywhere from $6,000 to $14,000 so you can see that Raccoon Mountain was very valuable to TVA that year," Cornett said.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340.