Climate change is increasingly impacting hydro plants, posing significant challenges such as greater sediment load, erosion, and cavitation issues. The runners of turbines, in particular, are exposed to increasing loads of various kinds. This paper demonstrates how customised runners, designed during refurbishment projects, can effectively mitigate these challenges and enhance plant performance. All the plants discussed are located in Türkiye, a region where the effects of climate change are becoming more pronounced.
Climate change is not only affecting the lives of humans, wildlife and vegetation but is also having an increasing impact on the operation of hydro plants. Dry periods are becoming longer and more intense, and extreme weather events with flooding are more frequent. While hydro plants of all types were designed for somewhat even discharge decades ago, today they must frequently operate at low partial load and full load conditions. At the same time, operation in the medium load range is becoming increasingly rare. If plants are operated at larger reservoirs, an increase in head fluctuations can also be observed. Because of climatic changes, however, the sediment load is also increasing, which can lead to erosion problems in various powerplant components. In particular, the runners of turbines are exposed to ever-increasing loads of various kinds.
One possibility of adapting existing hydropower systems to changes in the operational management is to customise the design of the runners which have already reached the end of their service life. Successful refurbishment of hydropower plants is achieved by many years of experience in turbine design and numerical flow simulation. Moreover, it is also helpful if model-tested reference designs can be used.
Based on the example of three reference projects, this paper shows how customized runners can be designed to prevent damage and increase the annual workload during refurbishment projects. All the power plants described in the paper are in Türkiye, where the effects of climate change are sometimes very clearly evident. …
Jürgen Schiffer, Dipl.-Ing. Dr.-techn., CEO and Managing Partner of the Prof. Dr. Jaberg & Partner GmbH
Roman Prirschl, Manging Directror of Kochendörfer Hydro A.S.
Helmut Benigni, Assoc. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn, Vice-head of the Institute of Hydraulic Fluid Machinery, Graz University of Technology
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