Lac Du Vieux Émosson
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__NOTOC__ Lac du Vieux Émosson is a
reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...
in
Valais Valais ( , ; ), more formally, the Canton of Valais or Wallis, is one of the cantons of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of thirteen districts and its capital and largest city is Sion, Switzer ...
, Switzerland, in the municipality of Finhaut at an elevation of 2205 m. The lake drains into the reservoir Lac d'Émosson, 300 m below. In September 2014, an increase of the dam by 21.5 meters was completed. The capacity of the lake was thus doubled to 25 million m3. The larger capacity is used for the Nant de Drance pumped storage plant, for which Lac du Vieux Emosson forms the upper basin and Emosson reservoir the lower basin. The storage power plant went into operation on 1 July 2022, after 14 years of construction. The construction of the plant cost the equivalent of 2 billion euros. The installed capacity is 900 MW, and 20 GWh can be stored. The
arch dam An arch dam is a concrete dam that is curved upstream in plan. The arch dam is designed so that the force of the water against it, known as hydrostatic pressure, presses against the arch, causing the arch to straighten slightly and strengtheni ...
Vieux Émosson was completed in 1955. Efforts to raise the dam began in 2013. The lake forms the upper reservoir for the 900 MW Nant de Drance Hydropower Plant which began operations in 2022.


See also

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List of lakes of Switzerland This article contains a sortable table listing all major lakes of Switzerland. The table includes all still water bodies located either entirely or partly in Switzerland, both natural and artificial, that have a surface area of at least , regar ...
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List of mountain lakes of Switzerland This is a list of high-altitude lakes of Switzerland. It includes all significant lakes located either entirely or partly in Switzerland, both natural and artificial, with an area of at least 4 ha (9.9 acres) and a location at over above sea l ...


References

Lakes of Valais Reservoirs in Switzerland {{valais-lake-stub