Alcoa Power Generating Inc

Alcoa-Yadkin is proud to have been a part of the Yadkin River Valley community for nearly a century, managing the union of water and power.

Alcoa-Yadkin manages the dams and water resources that extend along a 38-mile stretch of the Yadkin River known as the Yadkin Project.  The management of four reservoirs – High Rock, Tuckertown, Narrows (Badin Lake) and Falls – extends far beyond power production to providing public and private recreation opportunities, environmental and historic preservation, community water supply needs, downstream user water needs and flood control.  We’re committed to balancing environmental and other important interests while preserving the Yadkin Project as a source of economic, environmentally-friendly power.

One of North Carolina’s premier natural resources, the Yadkin River rises from a spring at Blowing Rock in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It then flows through North and South Carolina and eventually empties into the Atlantic Ocean throughout Winyah Bay in South Carolina.  Just south of the Falls Dam, the Uwharrie River flows into the Yadkin, and from that point on, the river is known as the Pee Dee.

In 1915, the Aluminum Company of America purchased an unfinished aluminum smelting complex in central North Carolina from a failing French firm.  Two years later, the company had completed the plant and begun to produce aluminum.  Power for the operation was supplied by a hydroelectric station the new owners built at a location on the nearby Yadkin River known as The Narrows.  The impoundment was first referred to as the Narrows Reservoir, locally known as Badin Lake, after the company town established by the French investors.  Because of the prevalence of unique French architecture, Badin, N.C., is today listed on the National Historic Register.

The Narrows Dam and hydroelectric station was the second built by the Aluminum Company of America.  The Aluminum Company of America assumed the popular name Alcoa as its corporate name in 1929.

Production at Badin Works increased steadily as demand for aluminum grew.  To meet the growing power needs of the operation, the company added a second dam on the Yadkin River in 1919 at a natural drop in the river known as The Falls.

The Falls dam and 204-acre impoundment were followed by the construction of the High Rock hydroelectric station in 1927.  The 15,000-acre reservoir was the largest on the Yadkin at the time, and is the most upstream of all the hydroelectric complexes on the Yadkin - Pee Dee River system.

The last of Alcoa’s four hydroelectric stations built to serve the Badin Works plant was constructed in 1962. It is known as the Tuckertown Development.  The 2,500-acre reservoir feeds what is called a “run of the river” hydroelectric complex, a low dam with little room for water storage capacity in the reservoir.

The four hydroelectric developments serving the Badin Works plant were operated independently of Alcoa’s other hydroelectric projects and energy-related activities until they recently were consolidated under the umbrella of Alcoa Power Generating Inc.  Alcoa Power Generating currently manages generation and transmission of power within two divisions:  Long Sault, in Upstate New York; and Yadkin, in Badin, N.C.