Unit 1 at Pump Storage Plant in New York Offline for Maintenance

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Researched by Industrial Information Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--On September 17, 2007, the Blenheim-Gilboa Pumped Storage facility began the second phase of its life-extension and modernization project. Unit 1 will be offline for eight months for maintenance work on the runners, water wheel, wicket gates, heat covers and pumps. The 5 billion-gallon upper reservoir was closed to allow construction crews to mobilize. Engineers said that since the upper reservoir would be out of commission for a while, they decided to perform minor maintenance on the other three units. Maintenance on the breakers, valves and penstocks of the other three units will last until the end of October.

Blenheim-Gilboa Pumped Storage is a hydroelectric power plant with more than 1,000 megawatts (MW) in Gilboa, New York. The plant is owned and operated by New York Power Authority and consists of four hydraulic turbines. It is a peaking plant that draws water from Schoharie Creek and recycles it between the upper and lower reservoirs. A pumped-storage facility operates by taking water from the upper reservoir and cascading it down a concrete shaft powering the hydraulic turbines before being deposited in the lower reservoir. At night or over the weekend (times of lower demand), the water is pumped from the lower reservoir back to the upper reservoir, and the cycles starts again.

In 2006, the plant kicked off a $135 million life-extension and modernization program. Every fall, one of the four units is taken offline to perform long-term mechanical and electrical maintenance to increase the overall generating capacity to 1,160 MW. The project will last until 2010.

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