BIG Things Happening at Niagara: 215 MW Turbine Unit Back in Service after Upgrades
In December, after many months off-line, one of the Robert Moses Power Plant’s 13 turbine units quietly started generating power again. While one of 13 units may not sound like a big deal, this single turbine unit generates enough energy to power a city the size of Rochester, so its upgrade and return to service was like adding a small, clean power plant back into New York’s energy mix – more efficient and better than ever after its overhaul – to help meet this winter’s roaring demand for heat and power.
In addition to the power it generates, the turbine’s physical size and scale is also massive– one turbine unit is about the height of a four-story building and weighs nearly 1,000 tons. Reflecting on the project, Mike from Niagara’s Mechanical Maintenance team says, “We have big tools and big materials; nothing is really small here.” See photos.
With the help of a large crane that rolls along a rail embedded into the floor of the plant, the unit is lifted up in pieces and arrayed for repairs in the plant’s assembly bay. The process of transforming a semi-analog machine into a fully digital one involves the complete disassembly of each unit, the replacement of many parts, and the addition of numerous sensors.
Unit 6 was the first turbine unit to be modernized and digitized as part of Next Generation Niagara, NYPA’s 15-year $1.1 billion program to bring the 1960’s era Niagara Power Project – New York’s clean energy workhorse and the third largest hydropower generator in the U.S. by capacity – into the modern age, so that it can continue to produce clean hydropower for the next 30-40 years.
Launched in July 2019, the Next Gen Niagara program encompasses four distinct phases
- Upgrading and digitizing control systems
- Overhaul and/or replacement of mechanical components that have reached the end of their operating life;
- Replacement of the 630-ton gantry crane that enables disassembly and reassembly of the generating units;
- Design and implementation of an inspection platform to inspect the plant’s penstocks, the 13 tunnels that run up the side of the plant and allow water to fall 300-feet from the forebay to spin the turbines and generate power.
“The first one is always the hardest,” says Mike. “We haven’t disassembled one of these units in a very long time so there was a bit of a learning curve for all involved. We’ll take our learnings into account as we move on to the next one.” See Photos of work on Unit 6.
One down, 12 to go.