Steady and transient regimes in hydropower plants

Hydropower plant that has been in operation for about 30 years has to be reconstructed. They have already installed 12 Kaplan turbines, the largest in the world at that time. The existing CAM relationship was determined based on hydraulic model tests and checked by efficiency on-site tests. It was also tested based on turbine bearing vibrations. In order to discover vibrations and long cracks on stay vanes detailed on-site measurements were performed. Influence of the modification of the trailing edges on the dynamic stresses of the stay vanes is also shown. In order to improve power output transient regimes were analyzed, both experimentally and numerically. Reversible hydropower plant, a pioneer in Europe since it was the first Pump storage power plant constructed with the highest head pump-turbines in the world. Analyses of transient regimes discover some problems with S-shaped characteristics coupled with non-symmetrical penstock