Wanapum Hydroelectric Station in Washington Replacing 10 Turbines

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The Grant County Public Utility District's Wanapum Hydroelectric Power Plant, located on the Columbia River in Washington, is replacing 10 turbines that were installed in the 1960s. The new advanced turbines are designed to be more fish-friendly and more efficient than the original turbines. Engineering data show that the new turbines will be 2.3% to more than 4% more efficient, depending on load. Voith Siemens Hydro Generation (York, Pennsylvania) started installing the turbines after replacing one unit for testing and evaluation in 2004. It is in the process of installing the remaining five turbines and will be finished with the replacement project in 2014.

The new turbines and generator upgrades will increase the electrical output of each unit from the current 104 megawatts (MW) to 122 MW. The price of the advanced turbines is $15 million each.

The 22-foot turbine shaft was manufactured in Romania because of the size (80 tons) of the forged steel. The shaft was forged at the Kvaerner IMGB factory in Bucharest, Romania, one of five manufacturing facilities in the world that can produce large, forged metal parts of the size and length required to produce the turbine shafts. Forging is a heat-intensive process that requires large steel billet to be heated to temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the shaft was completed and tested, it was trucked to the nearby Black Sea port of Constanta, where it was shipped across the Atlantic to Houston, Texas, and placed on board a truck bound for Wanapum Dam in Washington. The new shaft hub will be spherical, eliminating gaps from the leading and trailing edges of the blades and making for a more fish-friendly design. The design also incorporated six blades instead of five, allowing allows for a more efficient flow pattern.

While in the process of replacing the turbines, the utility district also decided to upgrade the original General Electric generators to take advantage of the more efficient turbines. The contractor chosen to implement the upgrade is Alstom Hydro U.S. (Littleton, Colorado). Alstom Hydro will implement the first upgrade starting in summer 2010 and finish the project in 2018. The scope of work will consist of generator rewind, replacement of field insulation, rotor fans, voltage regulators and cooling system upgrades. The generator upgrade project will cost $150 million.

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