| The hydropower plant Bishop’s Falls takes advantage of the momentum generated by the Exploits river as it flows to the sea from the immense watershed area of the central Newfoundland plateau.
The plant has grown from its original capacity of 1500 kW in 1909 to a rating of 17 MW through several expansions.
In the late 1990’s the generating units were upgraded by installing new turbines in the existing flumes, while at the same time converting the frequency from 50 to 60 Hz.
The new turbine design resulted in a higher runaway speed.
Voith Hydro was asked to perform an engineering study to find out the impacts of these alterations and determined that the existing rotors were not suitable for the new conditions.
Voith Hydro advised against recommissioning the units without structural modifications, designed and implemented modifications that accommodated the speed increase for the six 1950’s vintage generators. |
